


Winter

by AccidentalAccount



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: David is a terrifying dickhead, Ellie is a tiny Rambo, God I have the lamest title, James is lame, Joel's badass, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-23
Updated: 2014-09-28
Packaged: 2018-02-18 13:26:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2350004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AccidentalAccount/pseuds/AccidentalAccount
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A retelling of Winter and the aftermath. Chapter 5 edited.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So! First fic ever published, if you don't count the lovely Luciferines posting the stuff I submit to her on her Tumblr blog. Criticism is welcome. I don't own any of the characters, the basic plotline, ect, ect. You guys know the drill. I had a lot of fun writing this; hope you people enjoy reading it.

Holy _fuck_ it was cold.

Ellie let go of the reins for a second and cupped her hands to her mouth, puffing warm air over them. The light breeze felt like needles on the exposed skin of her face and neck, making her want to let her hair down in lieu of a scarf. _And if you get attacked and can't see where you're shootin'?_ Strange. Her survival instinct was starting to sound like Joel. She sighed forlornly and settled for flipping up the collar of her jacket. Stupid fucking winter. Stupid fucking cold. Stupid fucking Joel. Jesus. He owed her so many songs, she'd be collecting until--

Callus abruptly planted his feet and lowered his head, sending Ellie tumbling over his ears. She landed with a hollow thump on the frozen ground, pain shooting up her spine. Ellie sat up slowly, glaring at horse, who was completely ignoring her and enthusiastically demolishing a sparse bush.

Ellie snorted a laugh and got to her feet, brushing snow off her jeans. Finding food for herself and Joel was hard; finding food for Callus was near impossible. Her half-smile faded as she took in the horse's skeletal appearance. She'd been making do with old dog food and hay she'd found, but it just wasn't enough.

 _Speaking of food..._ A sharp pain twisted in her gut. Ellie scowled and walked over to Callus, who had finished stripping the bush of its half-dead leaves and smaller branches, but was still mournfully nibbling on it. "Hunting. Right. Need to focus."

She pulled herself up onto his back easily. If there was one good thing about Joel being out of commission, it would be that it's forced her to get stronger. Ellie clicked her tongue and pressed her heels into Callus' sides to get him moving.

Another uneventful hour passed as she rode deeper into the woods, nary a bird or squirrel in sight. She was about to call it quits and start back when she spotted a dark little hole yawning in the ground a few yards away. Ellie pulled Callus to a stop, then carefully turned him parallel to the rabbit burrow. She unslung her bow and notched an arrow, waiting.

A little pink nose poked out of the hole, twitching wildly. Ellie held her breath and silently willed Callus to stay still as the rest of the rabbit followed, its fur as white as the snow. She drew the string back and took a bead on it, then let the arrow fly.

With a whistle and a dull thunk, it hit its mark, spearing the rabbit through its side. Ellie grinned and slid down from the saddle, trotting over to her prize. The grin faded when she slid arrow out of the rabbit and realized it was just as bony as Callus.

"This isn't going to last long..." she muttered with a sigh, slipping the arrow into her backpack and walking back to Callus. She lashed the rabbit to his saddle and glanced over her shoulder at the sound of a twig snapping.

Holy _shit._

A stag. _An actual fucking stag._ He lifted his head and trotted down the hill and out of sight, oblivious. She flipped Callus’ reins over his head and tossed them onto a branch of the scraggly little tree he stood next to.

“You’ll just startle it,” Ellie offered not-quite-apologetically by way of explanation, not looking back as she jogged to where the stag disappeared. She slid down the steep hillside and landed in a crouch.

“Where’d you go?” she muttered, readying her bow. She inched forward cautiously, but still managed to step on a brittle branch. The stag erupted from behind a stand of rocks and bounded away over a ridge.

“There you are.” Ellie grinned and followed him to the ridge, where she paused to survey the land. The stag was at the far end of the gully, nosing around in the snow for something. Off to the left, a rock protruded from a bit of higher ground close enough to get a good shot, but not where the stag could see or smell her.

She continued into the gully, making her way to that perfect spot, keeping one eye on the deer the whole time. Ellie got to her perch and settled, notching and arrow and drawing back the string.

_Wind’s coming straight down the gully, maybe six or ten miles per hour. Adjust to the left…_

She let go and the arrow struck the stag in the shoulder instead of his neck. Dammit. She adjusted too far. He bellowed in pain and took off, circling around the bluff.

She jumped down from her perch and pursued, the trail marked clearly by splatters of blood _so much like the one Joel left at the university._

_Shut up._

Ellie hesitated in the shadow of the stone wall and--on a hunch--took to high ground on her left. She pulled herself onto a rock ledge at the top of the hill and spotted the stag rooting around behind some evergreens.

She squinted against the wind and notched an arrow. Not exactly ideal conditions, and the distance was stretching it, but…

The exact moment she loosed her arrow, the wind decided to pick up and fling it back against the butte with a noisy clatter. The buck took off.

"Fuck," Ellie hissed. She turned and got back to the trail, then made her way along the butte's base, scrambling over rocks to retrieve her arrow. She ended up finding it by putting her hand on the head and nearly cutting her palm open.

Jamming the arrow into her backpack with more force than strictly necessary, Ellie slogged up the hill in now knee-deep snow after the stag.

Pausing by a boulder at the top of the hill to get her breath back, she spotted him immediately. He was standing in the center of the clearing, taunting her. Well, not taunting her. He didn't know she was there. Ellie circled around behind him to keep it that way. At least, until something snapped under her foot. She froze.

The stag's head shot up. He looked around, flipped his ears, sniffed the wind, then after half a minute turned his attention back to the arrow protruding from his shoulder.

Ellie let out a sharp breath and inched forward a little more, notching an arrow. She took careful aim and let go of the string. Of course the rat-bastard stag limped forward, so the arrow took him in the side instead of in the neck. He screamed hoarsely-- _like Joel did when you pulled him off of that rebar_ \--and ran again in a thunder of hooves.

"Oh, man," Ellie muttered, feeling like she'd been punched in the gut. She sucked in a shuddering breath, pretended her hands weren't shaking, and started after him again.

After losing his trail twice because he doubled back on himself and cut through dead grass, Ellie stopped at the top of a hill in front of a particularly large bloodstain. She snickered to herself.

"The amount of blood he's lost is _stag_ -gering." She looked over her shoulder, grinning, but the mirth was quickly stamped out and replaced with a hollow, cold feeling in her chest when the joke met only open air.

Ellie sighed and pushed on, coming to a half-rotted fence. She paused before it, giving it a dubious once-over, and tested her weight on it. The old wood groaned, but held. She vaulted over it and stopped again, listening hard.

Except for her own breathing and the creak of frozen branches, the forest was silent. _Fuck. There must be some infected nearby._

She kept walking, coming to a stop at the edge of the bluff overlooking a collection of decrepit cabins and what looked like either a factory or fancy-as-hell warehouse. "What is this place?"

Ellie looked down at the trail, then leaned forward to check the ground near the cabin. _Please don't be down there, please don't be down there, please don't be--_

Blood and hoof prints. _Great. Thanks, stag._ She sighed and walked in a tight circle, rubbing the back of her neck.

"Fuck," she growled, jumping from the ledge. The infected were probably all holed up here, nice and cozy and damp in the basements. Fucking stag was leading her into a deathtrap. Ellie snorted. Talk about revenge with your last breath.

She cast a wary eye over the cabin in front of her. Structurally unsound, creaky, rotting, and creepy as hell. Naturally, the trail led right through the middle of it. _Follow the yellow brick road, Dorothy. What could go wrong?_

"Oh, great," Ellie muttered as she stepped into the building. "Everything's cool. This place is not creepy at all."

She turned to her left and peered into the office, clearing it just like Joel would have. A can of nails sat on a shelf in a filing cabinet and a rag laid on the desk that still had a drawer in it. Ellie crept into the office, snatched the nails and rag, then turned to the drawer.

"Awesome," she said, grinning as she lifted out the fourth issue of _Savage Starlight._ She tucked it safely into her backpack, then went back out to the main building and continued on the trail.

Catching sight of her prize, Ellie threw all pretenses of being stealthy out the window and rushed out to the stag’s corpse. She realized with a scowl she’d have to get it back up the hill and all the way to Callus. A twig snapped behind her and she whirled around, drawing back the string.

"Who's there? Come out!" she demanded, regretting the words almost as soon as they left her mouth. _The place is probably crawling with infected, dipshit._

And apparently people.

"Hello!" the middle-aged man called out, smiling, as he stepped out from behind the electrical box. He might've been Joel's age, or a few years younger. Ellie didn't miss the rifle over his shoulder, nor the way his hand tightened momentarily on its strap. The second man was younger, maybe in his late twenties or early thirties, a ski cap stuffed over his blonde hair. He wasn't carrying a visible weapon, meaning he probably had a pistol or knives. Going by the pacifying way he held his hands out to the side, away from his waist, she guessed pistol. "We just want to talk."

"Any sudden moves and I put one right between your eyes. Ditto for buddy-boy over there," she said, trying to look as menacing as possible. The two men exchanged a slightly concerned look. _Hah. Nailed it._ "What do you want?"

"Uh. Name's David," the older man said, gesturing as he spoke. "This here's my friend, James."

Buddy-boy nodded to her and David continued. "We're from a larger group--women, children--all very, very hungry."

Buddy-boy looked over his shoulder. Squirrely motherfucker. She'd keep an eye on him.

"So am I," Ellie said coolly. "Women and children, all very hungry too."

David and his partner shared another look. Buddy-boy lowered his hands, so she switched her aim to him. David took a half-step forward.

"Well, maybe we could, ah, trade you for some of that meat, there," he offered, his hand tightening on the strap of his rifle again. Ellie turned her arrow on him. "What do you need? Ammo? Weapons, clothes--"

"Medicine!" she blurted out. Fuck. _Fuck._ Maybe she should just hold up a big ass sign pointing at her and reading, 'VULNERABLE. PLEASE TAKE ADVANTAGE OF.' Could she seem any _more_ desperate? "Do you have...any antibiotics?”

David and Buddy-boy had another fucking silent exchange and looked back at her.

"We do. Back at the camp." David started forwards. "You're welcome to follow us--"

"I'm not following you anywhere!" There we go. There's some command. _Remember who has a sharp projectile pointed in your direction, bitches._ David retreated back to his original spot with a patient smile. "Buddy-boy can go get it. He comes back with what I need, the deer is all yours. Anyone else shows up--"

"You put one right between my eyes," David interrupted with a small chuckle, pointing at the spot.

"That's right."

David nodded, looking a little bemused. "Two bottles of penicillin. Make it fast."

Buddy-boy turned to him, opening his mouth to argue. Ellie aimed at him.

"Go on," David insisted. Buddy-boy looked between him and Ellie in disbelief, backing away until he was out of her sights.

Ellie's arm shook for a second under the strain of keeping the bow drawn and her fingers ached enough to overcome the numb of the cold. "I'll take that rifle."

David's hand tightened on the strap again, his mouth falling open. Then he nodded and smiled.

"Of course," he said, walking forward to set the rifle down near her feet.

"Back up."

Ellie slung the bow over her shoulder and slid the arrow back into her backpack as soon as David was clear, then snatched up the rifle. She cleared the chamber and slid the bolt back into place. _Fuck yes._ Nothing like the feel of smooth wood grain and cold metal under her hands. She took another step back for good measure.

She thought about killing him. It'd be easy; take him out, wait for Buddy-boy, kill him too, get the medicine, fix Joel.

 _But what if they're telling the truth?_ Ellie's finger twitched on the trigger, a part of her whispering, _"I don't care."_   No. No, she did care, dammit. She's not like the hunters. She cares about what happens to people and she won't shoot someone just because they have what she wants.

"He's probably going to be a while," David said nervously, breaking in on her thoughts. He swung his arms back and forth in front of him like a child. "You, ah, mind if we take some shelter from the cold?"

If Ellie had half a mind she'd keep them both standing out in the open. But numb fingers and toes and the bone-deep weariness that came from slogging through snow won out.

"Bring him with us," she said, gesturing to the buck with the barrel of her rifle. David gave her a look, then turned to do as she asked. Ellie took her finger off the trigger to sniffle and swipe at her running nose. _Stupid,_ Joel's voice chided. _What if he'd lunged at you?_

_He was facing away from me._

_Don't matter. Never take your finger off the trigger while you've got an enemy nearby._

Ellie followed David, this time her rifle trained square on his chest as he dragged the buck into what might've been a workshop in another life.

Twenty minutes later, David was stoking a small fire, completely at ease despite the rifle.

"There," he said, pleased with the little blaze. He held his hands over it, then sat back and looked at her kneeling across from him. "You know, you really shouldn't be out here all on your own."

The first thing that popped into her head was, 'What makes you think I'm not?' but bluffing probably wasn't a good idea in this case. The fact that it _would_ be a bluff made her chest ache. Instead, she said in the coldest voice she could muster, "I don't like company."

"I see," David said, almost somberly, but then he was smiling again, no doubt going for a friendly air. To Ellie it felt fake and flimsy. "What's your name?"

She glared at him. "Why?"

"Look, I understand it isn't easy to trust a couple of strangers," he replied, deflecting the question with a chuckle. "Whoever's hurt, you clearly care about them."

 _Ouch. That_ was close to home. She glanced down at the fire.

"I'm sure it's gonna be just fine."

A lie if she had ears, even if it was one she desperately wanted to believe. "We'll see."

An inhuman scream from a human throat sent Ellie to her feet. It rose and fell, then trailed off in angry clicking. Fucking clickers. It wasn't the fungal plates or always-open mouth that unnerved her about them: it was the noises. Runners yelled, plain and simple. Stalkers had the decency to only shout as they died, thank fuck. Bloaters bellowed, which was a whole different breed of terrifying. It was the _oh god oh god that wasn't thunder_ fear. The noises clickers produced made her want to curl up in a little ball and be very, very still until the thing went away.

The clicker lurched in through the open door, its mouth open wide and head misshapen head tilted back to better make that awful sound. Ellie took a step back and her foot nudged the muzzle of the buck. The infected screamed and she flinched, but it only cleared half the room before David fired twice.

The first shot went wide, but the second caught the clicker in the chest. It fell to the ground, convulsing, and he crossed the room in two strides to put another bullet between its face plates.

"You had another gun?" She totally didn't freeze up. Nope. David had another gun and she was pissed about that, not that she acted like a scared little kid.

He looked like he tried to smile at her, but it came out as more of a grimace. "Sorry."

"Okay, I'd really like my rifle back, now," David said, holding out his free hand for the gun while he looked outside.

"No. You have your pistol." So it was a _little_ petty, but Ellie didn't exactly like the idea of holding a room with this many windows with a bow. David glared openly at her.

"I hope you know how to use that thing," he groused.

"I've had some practice."

David slammed the heavy metal door shut, then ran along the right side of the room to the buck. “No matter what, we have to keep them out.”

_No shit, Sherlock._

He dragged a blue tarp down from a tool cabinet and threw it over the deer. “Let’s hope they don’t find him. Cover the windows.”

“Okay,” she replied automatically, used to Joel telling her what to do. Not a few seconds later, the first group of infected started beating at the boards in the windows. Ellie let out a slow breath and carefully lined up her shots. _Don’t rush it,_ Joel said. _You’ll just waste bullets. Take it nice and slow. You’ve got time._

“Make every shot count, now!” David shouted over their fire.

“I’ve done this before,” Ellie snapped back, turning to face the infected climbing through the unboarded windows behind them. David got one before it could get all the way in. The second was five feet away when Ellie nailed it with a headshot. The third went down under their combined fire.

She took a moment to pat down the pockets of the infected that got in, scoring three more bullets for her rifle.

“You weren’t kiddin’. You’re a better shot with that thing than I am!” David praised, running past her to a cast-iron cabinet coated in peeling green paint. He started to drag it across the open windows, straining. “Gimme a hand with this.”

Ellie braced her shoulder on the other side of the cabinet, throwing her weight against it. Fuck. It was heavier than she thought. Infected started screaming outside again and she planted her feet and shoved harder. “Agh! C’mon, c’mon!”

The cabinet slid into place and Ellie stopped pushing, stepping away and turning to retreat back to the middle of the room. A garbled screech and angry clicks came from behind her, then cold hands grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back. Hot, rotting breath wafted over her face and teeth snapped the air next to her cheek. She dropped her rifle and struggled, jamming an elbow in the clicker’s throat and trying to twist out of its grasp.

David shoved her down, out of the way, and jammed the barrel of his snub-nosed pistol into the break in the clicker’s face plates and fired. He stepped away to take care of another runner climbing in through the window and Ellie fumbled with her rifle, fear blurring her senses and making her hands not want to cooperate.

_Fear is good. It makes you stronger, faster, smarter. But only if you don't let it control you. Use it._

Ellie forced herself to breathe evenly, finally getting her rifle in her hands. She stood and turned, raising the gun in the same motion. The infected running at her fell before it could clear half the room. A clicker bodily smashed through the boards on the windows, flopping into the room. Its head exploded in fungal chunks and gray matter before it could find its feet.

There was a brief lull in the fighting and Ellie turned to the locker in the corner. _Fuck yeah, medkit._ She shoved the kit in her jacket pocket and closed the doors of the locker out of habit.

“Here,” David said, tossing her a pack of bullets as he crossed the room. “There’s more infected on that side. It’s a big pack; they must’ve followed you.”

Ellie snorted and caught the pack with one hand. She tore it open with her teeth and reloaded. “Maybe they followed you and your friend.”

“It doesn’t matter,” David shouted over the report of her rifle as she took down two runners coming in from the left. “Now we’re stuck in this together.”

The next half-minute she spent firing, reloading, and scrambling across the blood-slicked floor for ammo. Eventually the infected stopped coming, but by the hooting and shrieking outside more were on their way. A lot more.

“Screw it,” David growled, storming over to the boarded-up door at the back of the room. “We’re gettin’ out of this room.”

He unceremoniously kicked the door open and took off down the hall with an unnecessary shout for Ellie to follow him, as she was already hard on his heels. A windowpane shattered next to her as she ran, frostbitten hands scrabbling at her jacket then falling away.

“Fucking infected,” she hissed, glancing over her shoulder at the clicker forcing its way into the hall behind them. She took the stairs two at a time and David hauled her up the last knee-high concrete step into the next room.

“Cover the stairs,” he ordered, bracing his shoulder against a metal filing cabinet. “I’ll block their path.”

Ellie only had time to drop the closest clicker wearing ridiculous purple pants, and then the barrier was in place. The other two infected in the hall slammed themselves into it, wailing. The cabinet shuddered, but held.

“Follow me, through here,” David said, pushing against a rusted set of double doors. He threw his shoulder into them when they wouldn’t budge, causing them to slam open with a protesting screech that rivaled the sound of the infected behind them. Ellie winced and followed David into what looked like a distribution center.

“Do you know where you’re going?” she asked dubiously, pausing to pick up some supplies she saw lying around. Rag, half a pair of scissors, two almost empty bottles of rubbing alcohol, and another rag.

“I’ve never set foot in this place,” he replied honestly, looking over the wreckage of machines.

“Oh, great.”

“It’s clear. This way,” David said, ignoring her and leading her into a maze of snow and the husks of machinery.

“Right behind you,” Ellie muttered, jogging after him.

“How you holdin’ up?” he asked, going up a flight of stairs to a metal catwalk.

“You don’t need to worry about me.” Maybe he _wasn’t_ lying. He seemed nice enough...Tentatively, Ellie started to let herself trust him.

“Alright, stay close,” David said, vaulting over a fallen metal tube of some kind. Ellie followed, but the catwalk groaned under her feet and plummeted. She managed to squeak out an _oh shit_ before she landed hard on her back.

 _Fuuuuuuck._ Ellie made a squeaky, breathless noise instead of a groan and propped herself up on one elbow, gaping like a fish out of water. The fall had knocked the breath out of her but with the exception of a persistent ache in the middle of her back, she was uninjured. _Thank you, backpack._

“Hey kid,” David called down to her. “You alright?”

No, perfectly fine. It’s not like she just fell fifteen feet and can’t breathe. Ellie finally sucked in a shuddering breath, her diaphragm remembering how to work again.

“I’m fine,” she called up, forcing herself to her knees. _Ow. Ow, ow, ow._ Metal clanged somewhere up ahead and David tensed. The eerie scream-click told it all, but he naturally insisted on pointing out the obvious.

“More clickers...Get outta there!” He disappeared from sight, running along the catwalk, pursued by a clicker. Ellie got to her feet and ran to a metal wall, flattening herself against it. She waited and listened, David shooting up above. She peered around the corner to see a clicker in a garish purple windbreaker advanced on her hiding spot, clawing at its head now and then and releasing sharp bursts of clicking that were almost screeches. It bashed its head on the wall, screamed, hit it a few times, then wandered off, slipping into passive clicks.

Ellie shuddered and followed it quietly, walking on the balls of her feet. She took her switchblade out of her pocket, popped it open, then jumped on the clicker’s back and stabbed it in the back of the neck, sawing her blade sideways. It went down quietly and Ellie settled into a crouch, listening. She heard two more active clickers a ways off, but also a quiet, passive clicking coming from nearby.

She started forward, then stopped dead. Not two feet from her was the passive clicker, jerking sporadically in place. Ellie held her breath and edged forward, fingers tightening on the bloodsoaked handle of her switchblade. She lunged all at once, sticking the knife into the break in the fungal plates and twisting. The clicker made a choked sound, then fell. She pulled out the blade with a sick pop and kept going, hiding behind a turbine when one of the active clickers lurched her way.

Ellie reached out and picked up a brick lying nearby. When the infected came into view, she lobbed the brick at its head. It screeched, fungal plates breaking off and oozing blood, exposing the brain. The clicker, surprisingly, took care of the rest. It ran forward, frenzied, and hit its head against the wall. Blood splattered and it crumpled to the ground.

“Brick fucking master,” she muttered to herself, then turned to look for the last clicker. She didn’t need to. It found her. It charged with that rise-and-fall scream, windmilling its arms wildly in front of it. Ellie ducked out of its way, slipping less-than-gracefully around it, and jammed her knife into its side. It screamed again and turned, freeing her blade. She shot to her feet to meet the clicker, driving the switchblade up, under its sternum. It groaned and slumped over on her, getting blood all over her jacket.

Ellie wrinkled her nose at the smell and shoved it off, then sank to the ground, panting. She felt sick and the back of her neck itched, but she didn’t go to scratch it. It was just a symptom of her adrenaline crash, anyway. She took a moment to catch her breath and calm down, leaning her head back against the wall and closing her eyes. Alive. Alive. She was alive. Ellie sighed and pushed herself back to her feet. If she stumbled a little, her only audience was a pair of dead clickers.

She walked toward the direction they came from and almost stepped out into open air, catching herself at the last second. She’s had enough falling for one day, thanks. Ellie searched the lower room and spotted a ladder leading up to somewhere else on the opposite side. She jumped down into the room and jogged over to the ladder, pulling her sleeves over her hands before touching the freezing metal.

She topped the ladder and swung her legs over the low concrete wall. She took two steps forward before a clicker rounded the corner, shrieking. Before she could do anything but drop into a crouch, two shots shattered its skull.

“You alright?”

“Oh, there you are.”

They spoke at the same time, but David took her response as an okay, seeing as she was walking around and still breathing.

_How ‘bout you, kid? You okay?_

_Define okay._

_You still breathin’?_

_Do small, panicked breaths count?_

_Heh. Yeah, they count._

“Come on,” David said, breaking in on her reverie. “Door’s this way.”

“We’ve got to get up there. That ladder could work.” He indicated a ledge too high for a boost and walked around the room, eyes on the ladder, trying to see a way to get to it. Ellie looked around too. That ledge was too high for a boost, but the one opposite of it…

“Here. C’mere, boost me up,” she said, turning to David and gesturing to the lower ledge. He jogged over and cupped his hands for her. Ellie put her foot in his hands and lightly held onto his shoulder for balance. It felt...wrong, somehow. Joel was taller by at least half a foot, with broader shoulders and stronger hands.

“Okay. Ready?”

“Hang on…” Ellie adjusted her foot so it felt more secure. “Okay.”

David hefted her up, just barely managing to get her close enough to hook her arms over the edge. She pulled herself painfully slowly up the rest of the way and got to her feet.

“Alright. You be quick and keep a look out for those things,” he said, sounding nervous. Psh. Like she couldn’t handle herself.

“I know,” Ellie replied, trying not to sound too annoyed. She crouched and crept forward, testing each section of the catwalk before committing to walk across it. It was slow and tedious, but she couldn’t take another fall like that. It was also forcing her to be quiet, so she got plenty of warning when three clickers suddenly went active.

Two were well below Ellie, lurching around beneath the catwalks. One was up there with her, puttering about near a little storage alcove and the walkway just before it. She unslung her bow and notched an arrow, waiting for the clicker to wander out to where she would have time enough to make two shots.

The infected unwittingly complied, shuffling into range. It took an arrow in the stomach and another in the heart, going down without even a screech.

“What’s going on up there?” David shouted, his voice echoing strangely. “Is everything alright?”

 _Shut up, shut up! Fucking idiot..._ Ellie waited, eyes on the clickers below. They screamed and battered themselves against a wall blocking them from David, but settled down soon enough. She sighed and hurried over to the clicker’s corpse to retrieve her arrows. She’d talk to him about keeping his goddamn mouth shut after she got the ladder.

Only one of the arrows was salvageable, the other snapped in half by the clicker’s fall. Ellie ducked into the alcove it had been walking around, looking for supplies. A Firefly tag resting on a crate just inside the entrance caught her eye first. She gingerly picked it up and read the name engraved on the cheap tin. Travis Kristof. Ellie looked back out on the catwalks at the clicker. So that was his name. Travis. She tucked the tag into her jacket pocket. If he had friends or family, they deserved to know. If they ever actually found the Fireflies. If she got out of here alive. If Joel doesn’t--

He’s not going to. Ellie is going to get the medicine to him and he’ll be back on his feet and kicking ass in no time.

She swallowed the lump in her throat and scrubbed at her eyes, pretending it was just the cold making them water even as her chest tightened with pain. Ellie opened the low cupboard pushed against the wall and took off her backpack, taking out her inventory list and stub of a pencil. It was a habit she’d gotten into at the prep school and she wasn’t about to squander it, even now. She added the supplies she’d found earlier in the day, including the _Savage Starlight_ comic, then looked over the contents of the cupboard. Can of nails, half a bottle of 80 proof vodka, rag, and--perhaps the best of the lot--two bullets for her pistol.

Ellie gathered the supplies and put everything except for the vodka, rag, and bullets in her bag. She pulled out the two almost-empty bottles of rubbing alcohol and poured them into the vodka bottle, then discarded the plastic bottles. She packed one end of the rag firmly into the mouth of the bottle, then tucked her molotov into a side pocket on her backpack. Ellie crossed out the rubbing alcohol, vodka, and a rag from her list, drawing the lines so they pointed off in one arrow to the side and wrote, ‘molotov.’ She then dug out her pistol from the recesses of her bag and ejected the magazine to load the two bullets. She slapped the magazine back in, pulled the slide back to cock it, but kept the safety on and tucked the pistol into her waistband.

Ellie turned to the tall work cabinet and pulled a package of phosphate down from a shelf. She tucked it into her bag and marked it on her list, then put the list and pencil back in the small pocket on the front of her backpack. She zipped it up and continued on to the ladder.

“Alright, here you go,” she said, pushing the ladder over the edge of the catwalk. David caught it and quickly moved out of her way so she could jump down.

“Through here.” He gestured to a set of red double doors. Ellie went through first, with David closing the doors behind them. She looked around, hearing a runner somewhere.

“We need to find a way out of here,” David said, half to himself. This time she couldn’t stop a snarky response.

“Psh. Yeah, no shit.”

“You ought to watch your language,” he replied, giving her a half-exasperated look. Ellie rolled her eyes.

“Okay, old man.”

She could hear two runners now and started up the stairs to a raised section of the room they came to. Two corpses lay cold and shredded on the floor.

“Geez,” she said, nudging the closest one with her foot. It didn’t move, frozen flesh unyielding. “Looks like someone already fought those things and lost.”

“Ah, Lord,” David said mournfully, rubbing his scraggly beard. “I’ve been lookin’ for these boys. Doesn’t matter. Grab their gear. I’m gonna look for an exit.”

Ellie didn’t need to be told twice, gleefully plundering the dead men’s supplies. She gathered what she could carry, this time forgoing the list as it would simply take too damn long. She’d do it later. More grunts and screams started to surround the building, making her a bit nervous.

“See anything?” she called out to David, arranging a little stockpile of molotovs, just in case.

“It’s a dead end. How on Earth did they _use_ this building?”

“So what do we do?”

“We hold our ground,” he replied somberly. _Yeah, well, look what happened to the guys that tried that the first time around._

“Is there any other choice?”

“We die.”

David was just a big ball of fucking sunshine. She sighed. “Right.”

“Get ready!” he shouted from the front of the room. Ellie turned, drawing her rifle. Runners were starting to get in through the windows of the way they came. Of course. She trained her sights on the doorway, waiting. She took out the first one through the door, but then David was in the way, grappling with the second. The third darted off across the room, coming around from the other flight of stairs to flank her. Ellie turned and shot him as he reached her level, then turned her attention back to the door. David shoved the infected away and put it down with a bullet to the head. He retreated back up the stairs, giving her room to work.

The next two through the door were clickers, which went down easily enough. Then footsteps came from above them. _Fucking motherfuck shitpails._ Fuckers climbed the side of the fucking building to get on the fucking roof. Fuck.

“You hear that?” she shouted over the infected. “They’re on the roof!”

“I know!” David yelled back, shooting at a runner coming through the window. They stopped talking and fought, time measured in volleys and reloads and the ever-growing pile of bodies.

“We’re doin’ fine, kid,” he said, panting, during a brief lull. Ellie scrambled over the bodies, picking up ammo for her rifle and pistol.

“It doesn’t feel like it, she replied, reloading.

“Just stay focused. We’ll make it.”

He sounded so sure she almost believed it.

“Here come more!” David yelled, pointing to the windows on the right.

“How many of these things are there?” Ellie had only ever seen so many in the sewers, when she was stuck with Henry.

“I have no idea. Just keep at it.”

She supposed that was a good enough policy. Shoot until you run out of targets. Or bullets. Whichever came first. It was back to fighting a few seconds later, infected coming in from the left instead of the right. Ellie dropped a clicker coming up the stairs, but was blindsided by a runner coming in through the window. It dropped down on top of her and slammed a fist into her jaw, bouncing her head off the floor and making her see pretty lights for a few seconds.

Pistol fire, impossibly loud, and the infected straddling her went limp. She sputtered, spitting out its earthy-tasting blood, and struggled to roll its considerable bulk off of her. She got up just in time to fill a clicker’s chest with three shots from her pistol.

A couple more infected went down, then something big and heavy dropped down into the room.

“That doesn’t sound good,” David said, looking startled.

Fuck. Shit.

“It’s a bloater!” Ellie warned, running over to her cache of molotovs and fumbling for her matchbook.

“A what?!”

“One of those big fucking guys.” She struck a match and it broke in half. She dropped it and took another one, striking it against the box. _Come on, come on._ The match lit. _Yes!_ Ellie lit three molotovs and dropped the match. She picked up the first one and lobbed it directly at the bloater. It exploded on impact with a roar of fire and the smell of burning flesh.

The bloater bellowed and thrashed, slapping itself like that would put the fire out. Ellie turned and shot a runner, latching onto the report of her rifle to keep from freezing up at the noise. The molotov was starting to burn out, leaving the bloater’s skin blackened and peeling back to show the hard layer of fungus beneath. She gagged on the stench and threw another one to keep it occupied. The bloater roared again and ran into a wall.

“Right!” David shouted, the warning giving her just enough time to drop her rifle and jam her pistol in the clicker’s mouth. Ellie lobbed the last molotov and the super-infected fell to its knees with a weaker cry than before. A few seconds later, it toppled over, dead.

“Forgive ‘em, Lord.”

Okay, that was one of the _last_ things she expected to hear in relation to a bloater. But...Travis’ dog tag burned a hole in her pocket. Alright, it was believable.

Ellie stood still, tense and waiting, but there were no more screams or fucking clicking. She slowly started to relax, her head pounding as that punch caught up to her.

“Hey, kid?”

“Yeah?” God, she was so tired…

“You know, I think we did it.”

“Like we killed all of ‘em?”

David laughed, walking back towards the door. “Don’t sound so disappointed.”

Ellie huffed a little half-hearted laugh in response. “More like disbelief.”

“I’ll check the bridge.”

After combing over the room one last time--giving the bloater’s corpse a wide berth all the while--she walked out on shaky legs to join him. David beckoned her over to the side of the bridge.

“Listen,” he said.

“No infected.”

“No infected,” David confirmed. “What’d I tell ya?”

He turned to her with a grin and chuckled. Ellie couldn’t help but smile back a little.

“Alright. Let’s head on back, check on that buck of ours,” he said, companionably nudging her shoulder and walking back the way they’d came.

Getting back to the workshop was far faster than running from it, made all the faster by the easy silence between them. She wondered briefly if Joel would like David, but then pushed the thought from her mind. They’d be on their way as soon as Joel could walk, if he had anything to say about it. 

“You handled yourself pretty nice back there,” David complimented once they got back to the workshop. He crouched beside the fire, stoking it back up to a merry little blaze. “I’d say we make a pretty good team.”

No, she and _Joel_ made a pretty good team. This was temporary. Still, Ellie couldn’t deny that she enjoyed having someone to watch her back again. She crouched down next to the fire and set her rifle down, holding her hands out to the flames. “Pssh. We got lucky.”

“Lucky?” David huffed a laugh. “No, no...No such thing as luck. No, you see I believe that everything happens for a reason.”

Ellie rolled her eyes and blew on her hands. “Sure.”

“I do. And I can prove it to you.” Something about his voice made Ellie tense up. “Now, this winter has been especially cruel. A few weeks back, I, ah, sent a group of men out to a nearby town to look for food. Only a few came back.”

Ellie froze, weariness gone in a blink. Shit. Surely they couldn’t have been from here. She put at least a hundred miles between the university and mall to here. There’s no way that--

“They said that the others had been ah, slaughtered. By a crazy man. And get this: a crazy man, traveling with a little girl.” David pointed to her with the stick he’d been using to poke at the fire, his eyes hard despite the smile. Ellie stayed completely still, watching him the way one would watch a rabid dog.

“You see?” he asked with a chuckle. “Everything happens for a reason.”

She snatched up her rifle and shot to her feet, aiming at David’s chest. The sounds his dead men made when she shot them rang in her ears and stayed her hand.

“Now don’t get upset,” he said tiredly. “It’s not your fault. You’re just a kid.”

Just a kid that helped kill his men. She started toward the door, not taking her aim off of him.

“James, lower the gun.”

Ellie whirled with a gasp, pointing her rifle at Buddy-boy, who had a pistol leveled at her chest.

“No way, David,” he growled. “I’m not gonna let her go!”

“Lower. The gun,” David demanded evenly. Buddy-boy let his arm fall to his side, looking between the older man and Ellie. “Now give her the medicine.”

“The others won’t be happy about this,” Buddy-boy said, tossing a parcel at Ellie’s feet.

“Yeah, well that’s not your concern.”

Ellie knelt cautiously, letting go of the rifle with her supporting hand to grope for the tiny sack of medicine. She grabbed it and put her hand back on her rifle, her eyes never leaving James. She stood and inched towards the door. “Move the fuck out of the way.”

He slowly complied, stepping further into the room. Ellie backed out, trying to keep an eye on both of them at once.

“You won’t survive long out there,” David called out just before she left. “I _can_ protect you.”

 _Seriously? Fuck that._ Ellie shook her head slightly with a disgusted expression. “No thanks.”

She ran, then, and didn’t stop until she found her way back to Callus. She flipped his reins back over his head.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said urgently, climbing into the saddle. Ellie kicked him into a canter. “Come on!”

The sun was setting by the time they got back to the little neighborhood she’d chosen to hole up in, but she couldn’t stop looking over her shoulder. She dismounted at the edge of the woods and grabbed Callus’ reins just below his chin.

“Come on,” Ellie muttered tiredly, trudging down the street. She came to a house no more distinguished than any other and let go of the horse for a second to push open the garage door. She led him in, then turned back to the door. Ellie jumped to snag the edge with the tips of her fingers and pulled it down, not caring that it made a loud noise. She already did a sweep of the surrounding area. The first infected she’d seen in a week was the clicker that barged in on them in the workshop.

Callus whickered at her and nosed her shoulder. She smiled tiredly and walked forward to rest her forehead against his neck.

“I’m okay, buddy. Promise.”

He snorted derisively. Ellie laughed and slapped his neck.

“Oh what do you know? You’re just a horse.”

He nosed her again and shook his head, slapping her with the reins. She glared at him.

“Alright, alright. I’ll take your bridle off. Geez,” she muttered, flipping the reins over his head and sliding the top portion of the bridle over his ears. Callus chewed on the bit for a second before he spit it out and let her hang the bridle up. He walked over to his bucket of water and slurped noisily at the ice. Ellie rolled her eyes in mock exasperation and scooped up the hammer she’d left next to the trough for this express purpose.

“Move, silly beast,” she said affectionately, shoving Callus’ head out of the way. She struck the layer of ice on the water a few times, then fished out the pieces and tossed them into a separate, smaller bucket set to the side. Callus lipped her hair then moved past her to drink. Ellie patted his shoulder one last time and took the rabbit from his saddle. She brought it with her into the house, hanging it in the decrepit fridge as she passed. She’d deal with it later. Right now she needed to give Joel a generous helping of antibiotics and then go to sleep.

She slung off her backpack, carrying it as she descended the stairs to the basement. Ellie paused halfway across the room. Joel’s breath wasn’t steaming. Oh _fuck_ Joel wasn’t _breathing._

“Joel?” she called, starting to panic. A strained breath passed through his lips and crystallized in the air. She sagged with relief. “Oh.”

Ellie crossed the rest of the room, crouching beside Joel on his mattress and starting to dig through her backpack. “I only managed to get a little bit of food, but I did get this.”

She held up the penicillin, despite the fact he was quite obviously dead to the world. Her chest constricted. _Shit. Bad analogy._ She gently pulled down the heavy blanket she’d laid over him.

“Move your arm,” Ellie instructed softly, knowing it wouldn’t happen. She lifted the edge of his shirt and winced. It looked worse than it did that morning, purple and swollen. Terrible heat radiated off of it, but the neat row of stitches she made at the mall still held together. She grabbed the bottle of penicillin and read the dosage suggestions. It went by weight, and Joel would be...Two thirty? Maybe?

She made sure the plunger on the syringe was all the way down before sticking the needle through the rubber port and drawing out the suggested dose. Ellie drew the needle out and set the bottle aside, pushing on the plunger just enough so a drop of the medicine formed at the tip. She sighed shakily. “Here we go.”

She slid the needle into the area next to the wound and pushed down on the plunger. Joel made a noise of pain and Ellie ducked her head.

“Sorry…” she whispered, sliding the needle out. “All done. That’s it.”

She set the syringe aside, pulled Joel’s shirt back down, and lifted the blanket back up to his chin. He made a few more noises of distress as Ellie laid her hand against his forehead. She wanted to believe he felt more fevered than he was because her hands were still cold, but a miserable hollowness took up residence inside her. She hoped the medicine wasn’t too late.

“You’re gonna make it.”

As Ellie settled down on her backpack-turned-pillow and Joel’s head turned toward the sound of her voice, she wondered just who she was lying for the sake of. She decided it didn’t matter anymore, and reached over to lay a hand on Joel’s chest.

 


	2. Chapter 2

_Everything happens for a reason…_

Ellie’s eyes shot open, Joel’s labored breathing comforting for a few seconds. They made it through to another day, even if her jaw was killing her and she felt stiff as a board.

“--find her!”

Ellie shot upright. Shit. _Shit._ She got to her feet and climbed on top of the washing machine under one of the small, shattered windows and peered out from behind the ragged shirts she'd hung over it.

Three men walked down the middle of the street, obviously searching for something. Searching for _her._ Ellie let the shirt fall back into place.

“Oh, fuck,” she muttered, a flutter of panic growing inside her. “They tracked me.”

She hopped down from the washer and knelt next to Joel. “I’m gonna draw them away from here. I’ll come back for you.”

Ellie scooped up her backpack--rifle, bow, and all--and slung it over her shoulders, taking the stairs two at a time. She ran through the house and into the garage, startling a drowsing Callus. He snorted and laid his ears back at her.

“Sorry.” She grabbed his bridle and sidled up next to him, throwing the reins over his head. Ellie placed her shoulder under his jaw and crossed her arm over the bridge of his nose to hold him steady and keep the bridle in place. With her other hand she jammed her thumb into the corner of his mouth and pressed down hard on his gums until he reluctantly accepted the bit. She slid the straps of the bridle into place, then turned to open the garage door. Callus walked out on his own and stopped a few paces away, head lifted and turned toward the street, his ears pricked.

Ellie followed him, pulling the garage door shut behind her. She caught it before it hit the ground, then slowly crouched to keep it from making noise. “Easy…”

She slid her fingers out from under it and jogged over to Callus, pre-fight nerves twisting her stomach into knots as she mounted him.

“Go,” she whispered, hunching her shoulders and giving him a gentle nudge. Callus started forward, tense and jittery under her. They rounded the side of the house and two men came into view. Where was the third?

“Are we even sure she’s here?”

“Man, there were horse tracks down the middle of the fucking street. She’s here.”

Ellie hadn’t even considered the possibility David would send someone after her. Rough hands fisted in her jacket and tried to pull her down from Callus’ back.

“Hey, I got her!”

So _that’s_ where the third guy got to. She struggled against him, but he’d grabbed one of her hands and was tipping her out of the saddle. _What the fuck, Callus? A little intervention wouldn’t go amiss!_

“Get your ass over--” He cut off with a gurgle and Ellie yanked her switchblade from her throat.

“What are you waiting for?! Shoot her!”

“But David said--”

“Fuck David, shoot her now!”

“Go!” She kicked Callus’ sides and he eagerly complied as a bullet whistled over their heads. He thundered down the street, Ellie tucked low against his neck and just barely holding on, much less steering him. He leaped over a log lined with barbed wire and a man lunged at them, grabbing onto Ellie and the saddle. She clawed at his face, jabbing her fingers into his eyes and pushing against his head to get him to loosen his grip. He let go of the saddle to grab her arm, giving her just enough room to smash her knee into his chin. He slid away with a startled yell, tumbling into the snow.

The scenery passed by in a blur, Callus needing no more incentive to gallop than the bullets flying their way. Pain erupted in Ellie’s left shoulder, her vision whiting out for a second. She thought she might have screamed, but the most pressing thing on her mind after her vision cleared was righting herself. She was fairly certain her head most definitely _not_ supposed to be that close to the ground. Ellie pulled herself back up mostly with her right arm, her left throbbing with pain. She abandoned the reins and buried her fingers in Callus’ mane, gulping air and trying not to cry.

“Come and get me, you fuckers!” She didn’t care that her voice cracked. Oh _god_ it hurt. Icy wind passed over the wound like a knife and the blood steadily soaking her sleeve was freezing to her skin.

“She’s getting away!”

She was? Ellie looked up and squinted through the wind and tears. The woods. Yes, she could lose them in the woods.

“Shoot the horse. Shoot the fucking horse!”

A shot rang out and Callus stumbled, screaming. He tipped to the side and Ellie barely managed to jump free before his shoulder crashed into the frozen ground. They tumbled down the hill, Callus’ whinny cut off mid-note with a sickening crunch when they hit the bottom.

“Oh man,” Ellie whispered, shaking as she rolled to her feet and took in the bloodied wreck of her horse. Dull eyes and white bone gleamed mockingly at her, a red pool spreading beneath him on the snow. “No…”

She turned and made herself start down the hill, toward the cabin, grasping at her shoulder. “I need to go around...Get back to Joel…”

“Where is she?”

“She’s running for the cabins!”

Ellie broke into a run and dove through a window into the nearest cabin, shots kicking up snow and dirt at her heels. She crossed the small bedroom and shoved open the door, falling to her knees in a hallway. She crawled forward, into the kitchen, and took shelter behind the counter.

“Are we really killing her? David said he wants her alive.” Ellie turned her head to inspect her arm. Blood sluggishly ran from a furrow on the top of her shoulder just deep enough to hurt, but not enough to hinder. The bullet had only grazed her.

“He doesn’t get to make that call. James told me it’s the girl from the University. How many of our guys were killed there?” She pawed through her backpack, looking for the medkit she picked up the day before. _Wait._ She patted her pockets. _Ah. There it was._ Ellie pulled it out and popped open the lid, hoping it had some form of disinfectant…

“Oh shit. I didn’t know that was her.” The voices grew closer. _Aha! Hello, travel-sized antiseptic spray._ She popped the cap off the spray, quickly spritzed her shoulder, then started packing gauze into the furrow. “Screw David, then. I ain’t takin’ a chance with this.”

“I just want to finish up and go home. I’m freezing my ass off.”

 _You and me both, buddy_ , Ellie thought, unraveling the ace bandage. She wrapped it tightly over the gauze and patted it down to make sure it stuck.

“I’ll go this way. Check out that cabin.”

She rolled to her feet and readied her bow, biting her lip and doing her best to ignore the protests of her shoulder. A man with a scarf pulled up over his mouth walked into the family room adjacent to the kitchen, a rifle in his hands. Ellie let her arrow fly, taking him in the chest.

“Oh shit!” The second guy ran over to his buddy and knelt beside him. She put an arrow in the back of his neck and waited, listening, and started to count. She reached fifteen without any other hunters making themselves known and crept over to the two bodies to retrieve her arrows. One of them had broken, but Ellie salvaged the ammo from one guy’s rifle and picked up the other’s shotgun. _Cool._ She retreated back into the cabin and braced the shotgun against her shoulder, looking down its bent sights. She scowled at the obvious disregard for the weapon’s care, but put it muzzle-first into her backpack anyway. If she had to use it, she doubted the sights would matter.

Movement outside caught her attention. Ellie waited, but nothing happened. No shouts, no other noises...She crept back out to the bodies and saw a hunter moving around in the cabin across the lane and another coming down the street, toward her hiding place. Ellie notched an arrow and dropped the one on the street. The man in the house exited through its back door and crossed the lane to the wooden gazebo to her right. She nailed him in the liver.

She waited half a minute, then slowly stood up. No one shot at her. Ellie let her arm fall to her side with a relieved sigh and adjusted her bandage. Strange. It didn’t hurt as much as it did before. It still throbbed and ached something fierce, but at least it didn’t feel like she was trying to cut through her shoulder with a rusty spoon anymore. She pulled out the little bottle of antiseptic and read the label. Bactine, the pain-relieving cleansing spray. _Huh. Neato._

Tucking the bottle away, she jogged over to the bodies. The guy in the gazebo had jack shit and broke her arrows when he fell. The guy on the street also broke her arrow, but made up for it in ammo for her shiny new gun and a molotov.

A bullet bit the ground an inch from her foot. Ellie dove to the left, behind a low stone wall serving as the railing for a set of stairs leading down to the frozen lake, and switched out her bow for her rifle. She risked a peek over the wall but was forced to duck almost instantly. Two guys, one on the steps at the far end of the area, the other loitering near the restrooms, past the second cabin down, taking pot-shots at her. Ellie broke cover and ran into the second cabin, a shot kicking up her ponytail as it whizzed past her head. She ran straight through and out the back, catching the shooter by surprise. Her shot took him in the chest. The second guy made a break for the snack bar on the shore and Ellie took out one of his knees.

“Hey!” She turned at the shout just in time to get her rifle knocked aside and pulled into a choke hold, actually lifted off the ground. She gasped and dug her fingernails into her assailant’s hand, getting him to loosen his grip just enough for her to get her chin down and bite his arm. He yelled and shoved her away, reaching for his pistol. Ellie drew hers faster and put a nice little hole between his eyes.

The first guy was gone, a trail of blood and disturbed snow showing that a buddy of his dragged him into the snack bar. She snatched up her rifle and put a hole in the man running down the stairs. Two left. Carefully, she advanced closer to the shop, using the crumbled walls of the walkway as cover. Ellie got close enough to see the man she injured through the window, and then fire exploded to her right, licking at her jacket. She vaulted over the low wall and hit the ground running, sliding behind a plastic blue shipping container. She stuck her arm into the snow to put out the flames dancing on her sleeve and shotgun pellets punched through her cover, peppering the ground next to her.

Ellie darted around the snack bar, slinging her rifle over her shoulder and pulling out her own shotgun. Time to see what it could do. She jumped through the window and fired, the sound like a cannon going off in such close quarters. The shot pulped the man’s chest, shattered bone and fleshy chunks raining down in a torrent of blood as he fell.

Whoa _nelly._

Ellie turned at the sound of the injured man crawling forward in an attempt to get his buddy’s gun. She kicked it out of his reach and the shotgun bucked in her hands again, cracking his head like an egg. She held still, listening, but the only sound was her own ragged breathing and the howl of the wind outside.

She crouched and divested the corpses of their ammo--three shells for her shotgun, including what was in the other guy’s weapon, and three rifle rounds. On her way out of the snack bar, she found a bar of chocolate just sitting out on the counter. It was frozen solid and eighteen years past its expiration date, but Ellie tucked it into the inside pocket of her jacket anyway. Chocolate was good for a lot longer than it said on the package, she found.

She went back to the cabin she started in and searched it thoroughly, taking only what she needed and could carry. She completed her methodical ransacking of every building in sight and sat down on the snowy steps next to a hunter’s corpse to take inventory.

Chocolate bar, two cans of peaches, one can of noodles, matchbook--four matches left, three pairs of scissors, and half a container of sugar.

Ellie shuffled her foot away from the hunter’s still-growing pool of blood. She frowned at him. He stared back, eyes glazed with death. She felt vaguely ill and looked away.

“Don’t give me that look,” she grumbled, glaring down at her shoes. “You fuckers killed Callus. You had it coming.”

She folded her list and put it back in her bag, then stood up and continued up the stairs. Ellie paused at a sign, wiping away snow and grime to reveal the badly faded letters. “Nature track. Okay. That should get me out of here.”

She turned and took two steps in the direction the sign was pointing, then stopped.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

The bridge was missing a section of its floor. The only place left for her to walk was a narrow, iced-over support beam. Ellie hesitantly crept out onto the beam, putting a hand against the cliff face for balance. The ice crunched under her shoes and she glanced down, just to see how far she’d fall if she slipped. Vertigo slammed into her and she stopped, almost losing her balance. Not only was the bridge a hazard in of itself, it was also over the freezing water of the lake.

“Come on, Ellie. You’ve got this.” It didn’t make her feel any better, but she finished crossing.

“Oh shit…” she mumbled, stumbling out onto the solid section of the bridge and leaning heavily on the railing. She took a few deep breaths and straightened. “Okay. Okay, I’m good.”

Ellie continued along the trail, relieved to have solid ground under her feet. She had to crawl into to the next part of the path through a runoff pipe, tearing a new hole in the knee of her jeans in the process. She stood up and wiped her rust-coated hands on her jacket, walking forward. A fence blocked the path and another pipe waited. Resigning herself to more crawling, she ducked into the pipe.

“Agh…” _Gross._ Ellie paused to flick...whatever the hell that slimy substance was off of her hand and tried not to think too hard about what it might have been. She turned the corner in the pipe and sighed. “This damn thing is blocking me…”

She managed to turn around in the small confines of the pipe and head back out to the path, careful to avoid the patch of gooey something on the wall. She circled around to the blockage and grabbed hold of the wooden trash bin. “Here we go.”

Ellie pulled back as hard as she could, only managing to shift one side of it, and let go when it made a thunking noise and settled a little deeper into its depression. Her shoulder wailed in agony, and when she touched the wound her fingers came away red. “Fuck…”

Ellie unraveled the bandage, gingerly picked out the gauze, and sacrificed the cleanest rag she had, laying it over the wound and pressing down. She re-wrapped the ace bandage over the rag as tightly as she dared. It was far from comfortable, with every movement sending a jolt of fire shooting through her shoulder, but at least she wasn’t going to bleed out. She went back to the pipe and managed to squeeze past the bin, exiting to a ridge overlooking a lodge.

“That’s the way back,” she muttered, spotting a road leading back the way she came. “Hang in there, Joel.”

Ellie jumped down from the ridge and crouched behind a low stone wall. Hunters. Fucking Christ. David _really_ wanted to find her. She didn’t want to dwell on why.

“Cover the grounds! Make sure she’s not hiding somewhere over here!”

She readied her bow. The layout of the place was similar to the area with the cabins; an upper level housing the lodge and a lower level of dock space. Two men that she could see were on the upper level, with a third combing the lower. Ellie took out the man on the lower level first, then fired at and missed one of the men on the upper level climbing up the stairs to the lodge’s porch.

“...The hell?” He turned and stared at the arrow sticking out of the banister next to his elbow. She tried again and took him in the throat. All she had to do was wait about a minute before the last guy ran over to his buddy’s corpse.

 _You’d think, with the infection and all, it’d be habit to keep away from suspicious dead bodies,_ Ellie reflected, her arrow punching into the man’s side with a dull thunk. True to form, a fourth man she hadn’t noticed before came running over and subsequently died, his guts going for a ride on the arrow’s fletching. Movement on the lower level caught her eye. A man was starting a sweep of the far side of the area--too far for her bow. She switched to her rifle, missed the first shot, but got him with the second. No one came running at the sound of gunfire, so Ellie assumed the area was clear and set about looting the bodies.

Excepting pistol ammo and three of her arrows, they had jack shit with them. They probably expected to be back at camp before supper. She started to wonder if they had anyone waiting for them, then violently shoved the thought away. No. Not opening _that_ can of worms. Not now.

Ellie circled around the lodge, hoping for a straight shot to the road. Naturally, there was a big ass iron-wrought fence in the way. She sighed and eyed the dumpsters. Maybe if...She ghosted her fingers over the bandage on her shoulder. No. Even if the shooting hadn’t fucked it up even more, the dumpster wouldn’t give her enough height to get over the fence. The only way out was through. Reluctantly, Ellie turned to the lodge.

She had two options. Option one: lug a dumpster over to the side of the building and try to jump through the hole in the room without dying and/or making her shoulder worse. She wasn’t a fan of option one. Option two: hop through the basement window and avoid unnecessary pain.

No contest. Ellie slipped behind the dumpsters and through the window, dropping down into the little room that was more of a tiny storage closet than a basement.

“I don’t want to get trapped in here,” she mumbled, starting up the stairs. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck rose. There was a definite sense that something in the lodge was _wrong._ Whatever it was, she couldn’t put her finger on it, but crossed into the next room through the window instead of using the door and hid behind the reception desk.

Ellie stared at the hallways adjacent to the next room, half-expecting hunters or infected to pop out of the woodwork. Her palms itched and nothing happened. She edged out into the next room.

“She’s on this side of the lodge!” _Fuck._ A bullet whistled over her head and she scrambled back to the reception desk, taking out her rifle. Two more shots splintered the doorjamb, but then things fell quiet again. They were behind her, at the front of the lodge. They would come in the way she did. Ellie took a deep breath and ran for the hallways, zig-zagging across the room just in case.

She got to the far end of the hallway and a hunter swung into sight to meet her. She tripped over her own feet in surprise and landed hard on her bad shoulder, tearing a half-scream from her throat. The hunter looked just as surprised to see her as she was to see him, losing a few precious seconds while he fumbled for his gun. Ellie turned on her back and shot first, not even trying to aim past pointing her rifle in his general direction. She couldn’t miss at that range and he went down. She scrambled to her feet, breathing hard, with tears blurring her vision. She stumbled past his body and slumped down behind a desk in the next room.

“Hey, kid!” Ellie’s hands tightened on her rifle. “Stop with this shit and put your weapons down! You’re outnumbered and outgunned! You’ve got one shot, here!”

This fucker seriously thought he could bluff her into surrendering. _Like hell._ She scrubbed at her eyes and rolled into a crouch, resting the barrel of her rifle over the edge of the desk. The question now was, where is he hiding? The silence stretched on for a moment.

“Alright!” he yelled. _Aha._ Ellie swung her rifle to the right. _Lounge area. Probably in that corner, behind the armchair._  “Don’t say we didn’t give you a chance!”

She fired, her round punching through the flimsy chair with a puff of stuffing. The hunter gurgled and fell out from behind the chair, his eyes rolling back into his head. Ellie stood up and leaned against the desk, shaking like a leaf while she waited for the sickening pain in her shoulder to subside. It didn’t.

With a resigned sigh, Ellie moved to the door on shaky legs. Naturally, the door was blocked. She glared at the obstruction through the glass. If there was ever a better time to be able to destroy things with her mind…

The box continued its boring existence, innocently blocking the way. She sighed again and set her rifle down. She braced her good shoulder against the door and pushed hard against it. As soon as the box fell over and the doors swung open, however, arms like a steel vice wrapped around her and dragged her back into the lodge.

One of her attacker’s arms slid over her throat and clamped down, cutting off her airflow. Ellie pulled out her switchblade and drove it above her head, only for a hand to grab her wrist and force her arm down.

“Relax!” David. She struggled harder. “Keeping you alive, here!”

The black encroaching on the edges of her vision begged to differ. A few more seconds and the black covered everything, her thoughts scattering like scared rabbits.

“There you go…”

* * *

 

She woke to the sensation of movement and bound hands. Ellie struggled and caught David by surprise, kneeing him hard in the stomach. He dropped her into the snow with a curse. Tears sprung to her eyes as the pain in her shoulder momentarily increased, leaving her immobile and  gasping.

_Get up, get up!_

She heard David sigh and approach her.

“You’re quite the little hellion,” he said with a weary chuckle, crouching beside her. “You shouldn’t fight so hard. You’re just hurting yourself.”

“And you...shouldn’t use a choke hold...to knock someone out,” Ellie replied, trying to sink a bit of steel into her voice. Unfortunately, lying face-down in a snow bank, crippled with pain, wasn’t exactly menacing.

“Oh?” David inquired casually.

“Mm. Only lasts a few seconds. Any longer and--” She tried to move and gasped, blinking rapidly to hold back tears. “--you wind up with a vegetable.”

He laughed, a low, malicious sound that sent chills up her spine. “Good thing I brought a little backup. Breathe deep, now.”

He pressed a rag to her face. The scent was cloying and sweet, coating her tongue and the back of her throat. She’s read about this stuff. Ellie coughed and held her breath, trying to turn her face away. _How the hell did he have chloroform?_ Her head started to spin and she wondered briefly when she started to breathe normally again, but her eyelids were so _heavy_ and she didn’t think she could hold on much longer. Why was she holding on again? What was she supposed to be doing? It was important, right? Where was Joel? Why wasn’t he helping her? He always saved her when she got in trouble…

_Let go. Just let go. Rest. You deserve it._

_...Okay._

* * *

 

Ellie woke up to a headache from hell and a sound like tearing canvas. She sat up with a groan, then shifted to her knees and grabbed the bars in front of her, leaning forward to peer out into the rest of the room.

A man in dark clothing was sawing into meat on the butcher block in the middle of the room, his back to her. _Oh. So that’s what that--_

He brought a cleaver down hard and shoved a human hand off the block to the floor, where it joined a pair of feet.

_Oh, god._

Ellie shoved herself back from the door, bile burning at the back of her throat. If she had anything to throw up, she would have. The man paused mid-swing and looked over his shoulder at her. James. He scoffed at her and set down his cleaver, walking out of the room. Ellie got to her feet and tried the door, pushing against the chain with everything she had. It didn’t budge.

_Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit._

She paced in front of the door, testing the chain link as she passed. If she threw her weight against it...Who was she kidding? There was no way for her to get out undetected, and no means to fight whoever she came across. Ellie was on their home turf and at one hell of a disadvantage. She turned and reached through the bars of the door, pulling on the lock anyway.

“How are you feeling?”

Ellie stepped away from the door like it had spontaneously combusted as David approached, a tray in hand.

“Super,” she replied. If by super one meant they’d been hit by a train and shit on for good measure.

“Here,” David said, sliding the tray into her cell under the door. “You should eat.”

Her stomach rumbled. The smell was intoxicating, but she looked over his shoulder at the corpse on the butcher block and her appetite disappeared.

“I know you’re hungry; you’ve been out for quite some time.”

“What is it?”

“It’s deer.” _Bullshit._

“With some human helping on the side?”

David sighed and shook his head, smiling. “No. No, I promise. It’s...It’s just the deer meat.”

Like promises are worth anything more than the breath wasted to make them.

“You’re a fucking animal,” Ellie snarled, crouching beside the tray. She didn’t want to eat _anything_ he gave her, but she hadn’t eaten in two days and needed to get her strength up. She settled for picking the beans off and eating those, not wanting to take a gamble with the meat. The irony of her statement wasn’t lost on her, considering that she was the one in the cage and tearing into her food with such ferocity.

“That’s awfully quick to judgement,” he said, kneeling to stay on eye-level with her. “Considering you and your friend killed how many men?”

Guilt jolted through her before she could push it away. Anger followed hot on its heels, familiar and emboldening.

“They didn’t give us a choice,” Ellie snapped. They never did. They always shoot first and then she and Joel have to kill them.

“And you think we have a choice? Is that it?”

Ellie drank from the cup, the cold water helping to lessen the incessant pounding in her head.

“You kill to survive, and so do we,” he explained patiently. “We have to take care of our own. By any means necessary.”

 _Oh, that’s rich._ The military used the same damn excuse to cover up murdering people.

“So now what?” she asked coldly, setting the cup down. “You gonna chop me up into tiny pieces?”

David chuckled humorlessly. “I’d rather not.”

He looked at her almost appreciatively, smiling softly. “Please tell me your name.”

Ellie shoved the tray back under the bars violently and stood. “You’re so full of shit.”

“On the contrary,” David said, picking up the mess. She laid her hands on the bars in front of her. “I’ve been, ah, quite honest with you.”

He set the tray to the side and stood up. “Now I think it’s your turn. It’s the only way I’m going to convince the others.”

 _What? He wasn’t saying…_ “Convince them of _what?”_

“That you can come around.”

_Oh fuck, he was._

“You have heart. You’re loyal.” He walked forward and laid his hand over hers, smiling. “And you’re special.”

His hand was cool and dry, but the touch still made her skin crawl. She was half a second from pulling away when she had an idea. It was dumb as hell, but the only one she had.

“Oh.” Ellie hesitantly smiled back and put her other hand over his. His smile doubled, and that’s when she snapped his index finger. He shouted and tried to pull away, but she wouldn’t let go. Not yet. Not until she had those keys at his belt. She reached through the bars with her left hand, her shoulder feeling like liquid fire had been poured across it. She squeezed her eyes shut and her fingers closed around metal. Ellie pulled and tried to get the keys off the bungee, but David grabbed her arm and slammed her against the metal door until she let go. She fell to the floor and he rescued his keys, striding a few paces away to inspect his finger.

“Fuck.” The word was carried on the edge of a sob, her voice wavering. She had one shot and fucked it up. Now she was going to die and Joel would be left all alone and she can’t do that to him, she still had to give him the picture and--

_Take a breath. Calm down. There’s always a way._

“You stupid little girl,” David hissed, his voice cracking. “You are making it very difficult to keep you alive. What am I supposed to tell the others now?”

Her headache had come back with a vengeance and she just knew she’d have a colorful assortment of bruises and one hell of a black eye in the morning. If she lived that long. Ellie swiped at her throbbing nose and felt rather than heard the break in the cartilage grind together. Her hand came away bloody.

“Ellie,” she said. David turned to look at her with a half-angry-half-confused expression.

“What?”

“Tell them that Ellie is the little girl... _who broke your fucking finger!”_

David laughed and she could have swore the temperature of the room dropped ten degrees.

“How’d you put it?” he asked rhetorically, grinning maliciously. “‘Tiny pieces?’ See you in the mornin’, Ellie.”

He left and Ellie scooted into a corner, folding her sleeve over her hand and holding it under her bloody nose. She hung her head, the anger draining away, leaving her cold and miserable. She was going to die. She was going to die and it would be for nothing. She shifted and something crinkled in her pocket.

Ellie fished out the piece of paper and unfolded it, then sucked in a sharp breath. It was the picture. _The_ picture. She stared for a long moment at the little girl she never knew and the man Joel once was, then folded it back up and stuck it in her pocket.

No. It wasn’t for nothing.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And now we switch to Joel's perspective.

Joel gasped, his eyes shooting open. _How…?_

He looked around to find himself in a basement, of all things, lying on a mattress in relatively good condition with a quilt thrown over him. But there was something missing…

“Ellie?” He threw the quilt off and struggled into a sitting position with a strained groan, fire lancing his side. He got to his feet--or tried to, anyway. Joel got halfway up, then dropped back to his hands and knees, panting and covering the hole in his abdomen with his hand. He half-expected his hand to be red when he pulled it away, but it wasn’t. In fact, there wasn’t a speck of blood on him, save for a stray splatter or two on the jacket he didn’t remember putting on.

“Ellie?!” Joel got to his feet and stayed there this time, taking a moment to look around while he got used to standing on oddly weak legs. A few books stacked neatly off to the side and an empty can of peaches confirmed Ellie _had_ been there, but there was no sign of the girl herself or her bag. Only his, scoured thoroughly of his blood. He stumbled over to it and stooped to pick it up--expecting the pain this time--and he slung his backpack over his shoulders. It rested heavily on the wound, but he’d worry about that _after_ he found Ellie.

Joel swiped the six pistol rounds and three rifle bullets she’d helpfully left on the crates next to his bag, then started up the stairs. It was hard going, and the door at the top squeaked noisily when it swung open. He hobbled into the kitchen and leaned against one of the counters, taking a moment to let the pain fade to more bearable levels. The kitchen and the adjacent living room were empty of all signs of inhabitation. He had to appreciate her caution. It made him...proud, he found. That pride was damped by the reality of the situation. Ellie was gone. “Where the _hell_ are you?”

He pushed off from the counter and tried the doorway to his left. Ellie wouldn’t have been using the front door; she’s too smart for that. Joel found himself in a small garage with hay in one corner and a water trough in the other, the other side of the room taken up by old tool shelves. A bucket full of broken ice sat next to a hammer and the water trough. The horse--Callus, he reminded himself--was nowhere to be seen. He peered into the trough to find the water just starting to ice over again. A mixture of relief and fresh worry hit Joel like a semi-truck. Ellie had been here recently, she had the horse with her, and it stood to reason she’d be back soon.

Joel had never been very good at reason, and trusted the sinking feeling in his gut. He had to find her. He opened the garage door and walked out.

“Ellie!” He looked around and made a disgruntled sound under his breath. “Where’d she run off to?”

To his left there was a ridge and a shed, the rest of the neighborhood to his right. A body caught his eye a little ways down a trail going behind the houses. Fear and adrenaline pushed his injury to the back of his mind as he sprinted to it. It didn’t register that the body was too big to have been Ellie until he was already upon it and blinking confusedly through a haze of panic. His side caught up to him, throbbing angrily, but he ignored it in favor of being more worried than ever.

The man’s throat had been cut. That much was obvious. The snow had soaked up all of the blood already, and a light dusting of it coated the body and the horse tracks next to him. Joel crouched and rolled up the man’s sleeve to touch his skin. Ice cold. He dropped the man’s arm and stood back up. So Ellie had been gone for several hours, at least, and still wasn’t back. Joel set his jaw and tried to breathe evenly, following the faint tracks to the street.

As he neared a house with a sturdy wooden fence, a shot rang out and ruffled his hair with its passage.

“There he is!”

“Shit,” Joel muttered, ducking his head and scrambling to get behind one of the crates that had probably fallen from the delivery truck a little ways down the road. He pulled his rifle from the holster he’d fixed to his backpack and peered around the crate. Three men flooded out of the backyard, two falling in behind the crumbling sections of low wall and crates, and the other walking up the steps of the porch, spitting bullets that bit the snow beside Joel.

He shifted to the other side of his cover and popped up just long enough to catch the hunter on the porch in the chest. Joel settled back down behind his crate, his side burning something fierce, and spotted horse tracks a few inches from his foot.

The tracks continued on down the street, but if these hunters were here...No. No, dammit, she was fine. She was fine. She could damn well take care of herself, as she was so insistent upon pointing out to him. That girl was tough as nails and could shoot the wings off flies. There’s no way these men with their piss-poor shots could so much as touch her.

 _Still,_ he thought grimly as he rose back to his knees to kill an assailant trying to flank him from the right, around the delivery truck. _Things happen. They could’ve gotten to her while I was playin’ Sleepin’ Beauty._

“Move it! Don’t let him get ya!”

“Run!”

The two in the yard turned and fled, reaching the sanctity of the backyard before Joel could get a shot off. With his ire and concern growing by the second, he roared, “Where is she?!”

There was no reply.

He growled under his breath and laboriously got to his feet, doggedly pursuing the runner. The hunter tried to ambush him as he passed through the gate, lunging with a poorly crafted shiv. Joel brought the butt of his rifle up in a smooth motion, and the hunter’s nose shattered, blood gushing. He stumbled back with a startled cry, dropping his shiv. Joel closed the distance between them in one long stride and hooked his ankle behind the other man’s, then gave him a light shove to take him all the way to the ground. Joel drove his heel into the man’s face, bone and cartilage crunching under his boot as the hunter’s face concaved.

Joel huffed and limped the rest of the way into the backyard, casting about for the owners of the footsteps he heard crunching the snow. A gleam of metal caught his eye, and he holstered his rifle to wrench an axe from a nearby pine. Melee was more his style, anyway. He eyed the low wood shed butting up against another fence and took off his backpack. Explosives were impressive, too. He just hoped Ellie hadn’t raided his stash.

She _had_ taken a few of his things, but she’d replaced them. _Bless you, child,_ he thought, pulling out a nail bomb that looked like it was made inexpertly, but efficiently.

Joel clambered up onto the little shed, not just his wound but his old, cold bones complaining with the movement, also. He scowled and armed the bomb, then lobbed it behind a thin section of fence some genius had decided to use for cover. For Christ’s sake, he could see the hunter’s entire damn head. He shook his head with a sigh as the bomb detonated, taking out another hunter besides the one Joel saw. The flimsy fence was also a victim of the bomb, scattered uselessly into shards.

A third hunter rushed onto the scene, horrified. Joel jumped down from his perch--his knees creaked almost audibly in protest--and charged him. The man made a choked noise somewhere between a shout and a sob, then the axe blade cleaved through his sternum. Terrified green eyes locked onto Joel’s face for half a second before they went blank and he slumped to the ground. Joel ripped his axe free, trying very hard not to notice how young that hunter had been, or how his eyes were almost the exact same shade of green as Ellie’s.

He shoved the little part of him that was kicking and screaming, _“This isn’t fair!”_ into the little lockbox in the back of his mind, his hands tightening on the axe handle. He did what he had to. Now he had to move on.

Joel forced his feet to move, carrying him into a little alley between the fence and the brick house. He hauled himself over a fallen air conditioning unit and was almost immediately grabbed from behind.

“Gotcha, asshole.” Jesus Christ, this man was an amateur. Joel started prying the hunter’s arm away from his neck with ridiculous ease. “Finish him off!”

“Hold him still!” A second hunter approached warily, holding his shiv all wrong and with a wide, open stance. Idiot. Joel kicked him neatly in the balls, or tried to. He’d underestimated the distance slightly and the kick connected sloppily, unbalancing him. His target still went down, but now the asshole behind him was leaning over on his back.

“Son of a bitch,” Joel growled and reared back, snapping the back of his head into his assailant’s face. He turned and shoved the other man hard into the wall of the house, then turned to the second hunter, who was recovering. He kicked the hunter hard in the face, blood splattering the snow. Joel slipped and went down on top of the hunter, but that suited him just fine. He grabbed the lapels of the other man’s jacket and hauled him up, then hooked his arms under the hunter’s armpits.

“You come with me.”

“Lemme go. I’ll...fuck you up.”

Joel snorted. The only thing this man had fucked up were the chances of his and his buddy’s survival.

He dragged the disoriented hunter into a house across the street and unceremoniously dumped him by the old radiator. Joel bound one of his hands to the tubes, then went back for the other man and set him up nice and cozy in a chair in the center of the room, wrapped up tighter than a present the day before Christmas.

While they were getting their bearings back, Joel poked around the house and came up with a pocket knife and a map of the area. The knife he left on the dining table, but the map he kept in his pocket.

Once he was sure the hunters were awake and paying attention, Joel crouched by the man tied to the radiator and punched him hard across the face, but not hard enough to break bones. After a few more hits like that, the man in the chair started to crack.

“What do you want?” he demanded weakly between hits. “What the fuck?”

Joel punched the first hunter one last time, then got to his feet with a stifled groan, placing a hand over his wound.

“You wait here,” he muttered to the first hunter as he ambled over to the man in the chair, first crossing the room to pick up the knife. He dragged another chair over to the second hunter and sat down backwards in it.

“Now,” Joel started, sinking back into ‘interrogator’ like he’d never left Boston behind. “The girl. Is she alive?”

“What girl? I don’t know no girl.” His voice trembled and broke at the end, a note of hysteria creeping in. Joel slid the knife behind the hunter’s kneecap. He made a choked, gasping noise of pain, eyes and mouth open wide as he leaned to the side. “Fuuck!”

“Focus, right here. Right here.” Joel lightly slapped the hunter’s jaw, prompting him to turn an unfocused gaze on his torturer. Joel leaned in close and dropped his voice to a dangerous rumble. “Or I’ll pop your goddamn knee off.”

The man started crying, squeezing his eyes shut and rocking back and forth as much as he could with a knife in his knee.

“The girl.”

He nodded fervently, and had to take a moment to get enough breath to speak around the pain. “She’s alive. She’s David’s newest pet.”

_Oh no. No._

“Where?” Joel twisted the knife hard without waiting for an answer, tearing a scream from the man. David. That was the name of the man he’d have to dismember. Slowly.

“In the town. In the town,” the hunter said, his words more of a desperate plea. Joel plucked the blade from the hunter’s knee, then grabbed his jaw and stuck the handle between his teeth.

“Now you’re gonna mark it on the map,” he growled, taking the paper out of his pocket and unfolding it. “And it better be the exact same spot your buddy points to. Mark it.”

The hunter leaned forward and dabbed a spot on the map with the bloodied knife, then spat it out. “It’s right there. You can verify it. Go ask him. Go on. He’ll tell ya. I ain’t lyin’. I ain’t lyin’.”

Joel stood and walked over to the first hunter, folding the map up and putting it back in his pocket. He hesitated behind the man in the chair, then a flash of white-hot rage constricted his chest. This man had known exactly where Ellie was taken. He could have had a hand in hurting her.

Joel clamped his right arm down over the man’s neck like a steel vice, his hand clutching the back of the hunter’s head. He lifted him off the ground, chair and all, Joel pushing his head one way with his shoulder, and pulling in the opposite direction with his hand. After a few agonizing seconds of abdominal pain, the man’s neck snapped like a toothpick and Joel let him fall.

“Fuck you, man. He told you what you wanted.” the second hunter snarled, reminding Joel very strongly of a scared bully trying to act tough. “I ain’t tellin’ you shit.”

“That’s alright,” he said, stooping to pick up a metal pipe. “I believe him.”

“No, wait!”

Joel slapped the pipe into the man’s temple. He went limp, the light gone from his eyes. Sighing, Joel dropped the piped and hobbled back out into the snow, the map burning a hole in his pocket.

_I’m comin’, Ellie. Hold on._

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

“Wakey, wakey.”

_GOD FUCKING DAMMIT._

Ellie tried to twist out of his grasp, biting her lip to keep from crying out against the rough handling of her shoulder. Shit. _Shit._

James pulled her to her feet and tried to steer her out of the cage, grabbing her bicep instead of her shoulder this time, which was sluggishly bleeding despite the rag.

“Let go!” She twisted in his grip again, reaching out and hooking her fingers into the chain link fence. James pulled her away, and then David was there, putting a hand on her shoulder.

 _“Stop!”_ Her voice was raw and the word came out as more of a scream than any form of coherent speech. It _hurt._ Oh god it _hurt._ She impulsively ducked her head and bit David’s hand as hard as she could, only letting go when he kneed her hard in the stomach. Ellie gasped and the two men slammed her down onto the butcher block hard enough to rattle her teeth. The pounding in her head doubled, and bright dots danced across her vision, accompanied by queasiness. Still she struggled, only vaguely aware of David speaking.

“I...arned...ou!”

Ellie turned her head to the voice and everything slid back into focus. Especially the cleaver hanging over her shoulder.

_Jesus fucking Christ._

Her thoughts short-circuited, becoming one giant, incoherent mess she couldn’t make heads or tails of. _Knife. Death. What about…? If I try...Cold. Riley. Hurts._ Hurts. _Fuck. Joel? Run. Escape. Callus. Joel. Infected...Infected..._ Infected!

“I’m infected! I’m infected!” she blurted before she knew what she was doing. David paused, confused. He shot James a mockingly amused look.

“Really?” David hefted the cleaver a little higher.

“And so are you.” That caught his attention. He lowered the knife and shook his head with self-assured disbelief, chuckling lowly.

“Right there. Roll up my sleeve.” Ellie jerked her right arm, which David in turn pressed down on even more tightly. She could have sworn she heard the bones in her wrist creak from the pressure, but that was the least of her concerns. “Look at it!”

David smiled slightly. “I’ll play along.”

He buried the tip of the cleaver into the table, beside Ellie’s head. She flinched away from the strike, but a little part of her not consumed by mind-numbing fear or pain perked up and said, _“I can work with this.”_

David rolled up her sleeve and froze, then looked over at James.

“What’d you say?” She prompted. If she got them distracted enough…If she timed it right, she could get away. If she didn’t, she was fucked. “Everything happens for a reason, right?”

Chew on _that,_ asshole.

“What the hell is that?” James demanded, his voice cracking, pointing at her scar and giving her a bit more freedom with her left arm. She stayed as relaxed as she could. Just a little bit longer…

“She would’ve turned by now. It can’t be real!” David argued vehemently. That miffed her a little. How exactly would she have been able to create a realistic looking scar while locked in a cell? Did he think she’d pulled a magical makeup kit out of her ass? _Focus, Ellie. Wait for an opening._

“Looks pretty fucking real to me!” James had now loosened his grip on her entirely. David let go of her with his good hand to examine the bite she’d given him. _Now. Go now!_ Ellie snatched the cleaver with her left hand and swung it hard at James, her shoulder feeling like it was tearing apart. He didn’t even have time to throw a hand up in his defense; the blade connected, digging into his neck, just below his jaw. She rolled off the table in the same motion, barely in time for David’s wild shot to miss. James’ corpse thumped to the ground beside her, gurgling. She ran for the door, pushing the carcass of the deer out of her way, another shot ringing after her. Ellie made it through the doorway and turned, putting her back against the wall beside it.

She glanced around, panting, and spotted her switchblade stuck into the wood of a shelf to her left. She snatched it. The cold wood in her palm felt like coming home, and gave her a point to ground herself with.

“Okay,” Ellie muttered, then pushed off from the wall and leapt out the open window into the howling snowstorm.

“Oh, man,” she whimpered, though she’d never admit to it. She shielded her eyes the best she could from the cutting wind and stinging snow, holding her left arm close to her side. If she could, Ellie would avoid using it anymore. “What the _fuck_ is wrong with these people?”

A gunshot startled her into motion. She sprinted around a building and almost literally ran smack into a door.

“Where you goin’, Ellie? This is my town!”

Oh shit, oh fuck. Ellie tore open the door and slammed it shut behind her, shaking and panting. She looked around and blinked rapidly, trying to get her eyes to adjust to the darkness faster. In the meantime, she shivered miserably and clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering, the snow that had gathered in the collar of her jacket melting against her skin.

When her eyes finally _did_ adjust, she found herself in a storeroom of sorts. At least, it used to be. Ellie had no idea of its current purpose, and she didn’t like the idea of sticking around long enough to find out.

She managed to shift the laundry/waste/whatever-the-fuck-it-was cart blocking her way forward with one arm and the aid of her hips, pushing it in front of the door. It was a shit barricade, but if anyone came that way, they’d make a noise.

“I need a gun.” Ellie mumbled to herself as she ducked into the opening and crawled along on her hand and knees, her switchblade still clutched in a white-knuckled grip.

The sounds of doors slamming open outside caught her attention as she made it into the store proper. It was...a pet store? Huh. Ellie hid behind the counter with the register on it and waited, listening.

“We heard gunshots!”

“Infected!” David.

“What?” A woman?

“The girl. She’s infected and she got out.”  She could see David’s silhouette in the window. If only she had her rifle...

“This is bad, David.”

“Alright. I need you to round up everyone who isn’t armed and get ‘em to clear outta here. We’re gonna find that girl, and we’re gonna kill her.”

“Oh my God. I’ll take the kids to the shelter.”

The silhouettes disappeared into the blinding white.

“Oh, fuck,” Ellie whispered, feeling sick. He’d been telling the truth. Her ever-so-helpful imagination conjured up an image of the man she’d killed on the stairs, then picture him alive and smiling with two little kids that looked just like him. She dropped her switchblade and covered her mouth with her hand, hunching up into a little ball. _Fuck._

The door to the store opened with a merry chime and flurry of snowflakes, a dark figure moving into the shop. Ellie snatched up her knife and shoved down the guilt. Later.

The man-- _not just a hunter anymore ‘cause hunters don’t have families they don’t have kids they don’t they don’t they don’t_ \--stalked between the aisles, gun in hand. She waited in her hiding spot, then leapt out at him as soon as he rounded the corner. He yelled and fired, but she was already too close and drove her switchblade down into the “V” in his collarbone. A second gunshot came from behind her and pain exploded in her hip.

_I need to stop getting shot._

The thought flitted through Ellie’s mind in the half second it took for her to crumple to the ground, her mouth open in a scream but the sound frozen in her throat. _You have to move. Get the gun. Move._ She didn’t want to. She wanted to stop hurting. She wanted to stay here until Joel found her and then everything would be alright because he’s _Joel_ and he can make anything alright and he can make the cold in her chest go away and show her she can be brave, like him, because nothing’s as scary when he’s there and--

And someone was running.

She reached for a glimmer of metal she could barely see through her rapidly darkening vision. Her fingers closed around rough plastic and she rolled onto her back just as the second man came rushing around the corner of the counter, pistol raised. She shot first, the revolver bucking horribly in her hands, sending a shooting pain through her wrists. It caught him in the lower abdomen and he dropped to his knees, his pistol clattering from his hands. He dumbly stared down at the red seeping across his jacket, his hands hovering uselessly above the wound, then turned his astonished expression to Ellie.

“But--” His face twisted in a grimace and blood bubbled up between his teeth, staining them red as it dribbled down the patchy, poorly-grown beard clinging to his slightly round face. Tears streamed down his cheeks and he tried again, his voice garbled as he talked around the blood in his throat. “But I…”

He went slack all at once, like someone had cut the strings of a marionette.

Ellie scrubbed her eyes and forced herself onto her knees, not quite sure she could make it to her feet yet. She wasn’t crying, dammit. He shot her first. She was defending herself.

_So were they._

Ellie wished there was some fucking switch she could flip that would turn off her conscious.

She retrieved her switchblade and tucked the revolver into the back of her pants, then pushed herself to her feet. She had to plug up the hole in her hip, and fast.

A cursory check of the bodies and the store yielded no supplies. She had to move on, but something told her going onto the main street would be a Very Bad Idea. The other option would be the window.

Ellie eyed the snow piled up in front of it dubiously. She wouldn’t have to _jump_ through the window, she supposed. Just sort of...shimmy over. Yeah. Totally doable.

She limped over to the window as gingerly as she could--she’d had no idea how much her hips actually _moved_ while she walked--and sat down on the sill, her right leg stretched out in front of her in a vain effort to keep her injured side still. Ellie swung her legs over to the other side of the window all at once, hoping to get it over with faster. Her hip didn’t appreciate her efforts, and responded by bleeding more profusely.

In any other situation, she wouldn’t even consider packing a wound with snow or dirt. That shit just wasn’t sanitary. But Ellie had no idea when she’d happen across medical supplies of any kind, and she was starting to feel a little light-headed. Didn’t she once read somewhere that back during the Civil War era soldiers would pack bullet wounds with mud when the bandages ran out?

Ellie looked down at the snow-covered ground. Digging up mud would take time and effort: two things she didn’t have in abundance. As a matter of fact, it probably would have been a good idea to go ahead and enter the next building instead of standing out in the open _like a fucking idiot while she was bleeding out._

She jolted across the narrow alley and past the gaping doorway, the cold and stinging snow finally registering. Damn. She must have been more out of it than she thought. It was getting kind of hard to keep her eyes open, and her hip hardly even hurt anymore…

_Focus._

Ellie shook her head, throwing off the lure of sleep, and stumbled to the left, into an office in the back of the new store. She started to riffle through drawers, each one empty or full of useless shit when--on the last drawer--she found a medkit. _Hallelujah._

She limped further back into the building, to the restrooms where there was plenty of light. She slid to the floor right outside one of the two stalls, between a urinal and the window, then opened up the kit. Just like that, the fatigue vanished.

_You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me._

“Who the fuck empties a medkit and leaves the fucking case lying around!?”

Ellie growled and flung the case across the room, then struggled to her feet. Fuck this. Fuck that. Fuck everything.  She pulled her right arm out of her jacket, then her hoodie, and used her teeth to rip off a piece of her shirt sleeve to plug the wound with. She was not going to bleed out, dammit. With shaking hands, she shoved the scrap of cloth into the bullet hole. Her vision whited out and her knees buckled, but she caught herself at the last second, taking a step forward to keep from executing a textbook-perfect swan dive.

Ellie gulped down breath, hunched over, then slowly straightened and put her arm back through her sleeves. “Okay. Okay. I’m okay.”

Pain was good. Pain meant her body wasn’t giving up on her quite yet. She checked her fingernails anyway. Her fingers were cherry red from the cold. Okay, maybe not the best way to check if she was in hemorrhagic shock. She walked in a tentative circle. Balance was okay. Ellie checked her pulse. Rapid, and for good reason, but strong. Awesome. She wasn’t going into shock.

She turned and looked up at the window, dread settling in her stomach. Nothing could ever be easy. She backed up a few paces, then took a running start and leaped, catching the edge of the window with her elbows. Her shoulder--obviously feeling neglected while she tended to her hip--did its best imitation of a wet noodle. Ellie’s elbow slipped and she face-planted into the wall, rebreaking her nose with a wet crack.  

She let go with her other arm and dropped to the bathroom floor with a noise that could have been technically classified as a groan, cupping her nose with both hands.

“I am bleeding from _too many_ goddamn places,” she hissed through her teeth, stubbornly struggling back to her feet. Ellie glowered at the window. It was _that,_ or chance the main street. Going out on the main street was still a Very Bad Idea. She growled under her breath. The window wasn’t impressed.

Ellie swiped at her bleeding nose and took another chance, this time favoring her right side. Her shoulder didn’t give out, though it did hurt like a bitch, and she pushed against the wall with her feet, barely getting herself up and over.

Up and over consisted of a graceless flop into a pile of snow in the alley, which wasn’t as fun as it sounds.

Ellie groaned and hauled herself out of the drift and behind the relative safety of a dumpster. She shivered and peered uselessly into the flurry. Hesitantly, she pressed on, counting on the storm to hide her movements. If she couldn’t see them, chances were they couldn’t see her.

“There she is!”

Her wonderful, completely sound piece of logic cheerfully boarded a chariot with purple cushions and tassels, waving at her as it was shot all to hell.

Ellie sprinted across the street, through a courtyard, and up a rickety flight of stairs, straight into the arms of a burly, bad-smelling man. She reacted before she thought, silencing him with a quick stab in his throat, then bolting again.

“This place is a damn maze,” she muttered under her breath, crossing the street and ducking through a section of damaged chain link fence. She slowed and she stuck to the side of the street she was on. She found a building with a door, but two men inside.

“What if she bites someone?”

“Relax. She’s not going to bite anyone. We’ll find her first.”

Footsteps got closer to the door. Ellie dropped down and hid below the rise, scooping up a bottle near her foot. A man shuffled out into the storm, raising an arm to shield his eyes. She threw the bottle at him, startling him long enough for her to jump--read, awkwardly clamber--back up onto the concrete platform and stab him in the heart. She stopped, listening for his buddy. Hearing nothing, she hurried into the building and hid behind a row of arcade games.

 _Now_ Ellie could hear the other man’s footsteps. He was walking towards her. She slid along the consoles, keeping out of sight until she could follow behind him. He reached the door, where she’d left his buddy, and she lunged.

The man turned in the same instance and caught her in a choke hold. Ellie growled and wriggled, pulling against his arm until she could get her chin under his grasp and bite him. He practically flung her away with a panicked cry, then turned tail and ran. She stared after him for a second, then started running too, in the opposite direction.

Ellie nearly ran into a man entering the arcade, but managed to eel past and lose him in the storm before he could do more than shout.

“Where do I go?” She looked around, determined she _still_ couldn’t see jack shit, and kept walking in one direction. “Gah, it’s so fucking cold.”

Ellie circled around a school bus and followed a wide alley to a squat, red building with a conveniently open window and a dumpster positioned underneath it. She carefully climbed up and dropped into the kitchen of a restaurant, her right leg giving out with a sharp spasm and sending her sprawling. Not good. She propped herself up on her good arm and inspected her hip. The part of her sleeve she’d shoved into the wound was soaked through, and a trickle of fresh blood was steadily coating the layer of frozen blood plastering her shirt to her skin.

Ellie pulled her the edge of her hoodie back down and wrapped her jacket more tightly around herself. She was pretty sure her shoulder had started bleeding again, too, but they didn’t hurt anymore. Had she the energy for it, she’d be worried about that. As it was, she couldn’t bring herself to care enough to bother trying to keep her teeth from chattering as the snow in her hair and trapped in the collar of her jacket melted in the blessed warmth of the restaurant.

_Wait._

Her eyes snapped open. She hadn’t realized she’d closed them. Cooking fires, candles, homey atmosphere...Fuck. Ellie laboriously found her feet. She really, really hoped this place wasn’t currently occupied...

She pulled the ridiculously sized revolver out of her waistband and hesitantly hobbled into the dining area, where a banner to her right caught her attention.

“When we are in need, He shall provide,” Ellie read under her breath. She snorted derisively. Cannibalistic _and_ a religious nutjob. What a _wonderful_ combination. She walked down an aisle of booths and opened the front door.

David popped out of nowhere like a terrifying Jack-in-the-box and grabbed her arms.

“You’re easy to track.” He pushed Ellie against a sign-in desk next to a stack of crates, knocking down the candles sitting on it, and wrenched the gun from her weakened grasp. David threw her to the ground and pointed the revolver at her.

“How did you do it?” he demanded. So he still wanted her alive, if only to get answers. Ellie started to backpedal, and when David got distracted by the spreading fire consuming the table, she bolted to the kitchen, where she half-fell-half-slid behind a counter. She heard David laugh bitterly.

“That’s alright,” he called out. “There’s nowhere to go! You want out, you’re gonna have to come get these keys.”

 _Fucking fuck on a fuck._ She sighed.

Ellie tried to roll to her feet only to find her legs wouldn’t cooperate. They’d turned to jelly in the welcoming heat of the restaurant. She pressed down on the hole in her hip, which shot another round of adrenaline into her system and gave her body the motivation to get its ass in gear.

She managed to get her feet under her. If her legs shook with fatigue and she had to lean against the counter to keep her balance, there was no one around to notice.

“I know you’re not infected.” Oh, shit. He was nearby. Ellie peered over the top of the counter and saw him walk in the same way she came. “No one that’s infected fights this hard to stay alive.”

Her tired mind conjured up an image of Riley beating a clicker’s head in with a pipe, even though both of them had been bitten already. She shook her head to clear it. _Focus. Survive._

“So what is it, Ellie? I gotta admit, you had me back there. For a second, you shook my faith. But only for a second.”

David started to walk around her counter. Ellie moved opposite of him, keeping the counter between them at all times.

“Hey Ellie? I’m sorry about your horse, I truly am.” _Motherfucking cocksucker._ “I hope you--”

She didn’t give him a chance to finish, instead leaping on his back and stabbing the junction between his neck and his shoulder with her switchblade. David shoved her off and turned, firing. The bullet created a smoking hole in the linoleum beside her legs, then she was running again, back into the seating area, the revolver barking after her a few more times until it clicked empty.

“That was good, kid,” he called, though there was a slight tremor in his voice. The sound of a blade leaving a sheath sent chills up Ellie’s spine. “It’s gonna be alright.”

Jesus fuck. He was a _special_ brand of fruitcake.

“You know, you keep surprising me,” David said conversationally, stalking into the dining area. Ellie tucked herself underneath a booth just as he rounded the corner. He walked past her spot, not bothering to check under the tables. _Big mistake, buddy._ “Such a shame you wouldn’t come around. But it’s too late now.”

Ellie darted forward and jammed her switchblade into David’s side, viciously hoping she punctured a lung. He yelled and turned, swinging his machete wildly. Ellie leaned back, then turned and ran again, this time staying in the same area. She waited behind a row of booths near the religious banner.

“Run little rabbit, run. Run and hide.”

 _That_ wasn’t terrifying. She shuddered and peered over the booths. She didn’t see him. _Did he go the other way?_

The crack of broken porcelain was her only warning. Ellie flattened herself to the ground and David’s swing went high, the machete lodging itself in the wooden seat. She eeled past him and ran towards the entrance. The door was glass, for fuck’s sake; she could probably throw her shoulder into it and it would shatter.

Except for the fucking iron decoration lacing across it. Ellie settled behind the booth nearest to the door and waited, listening hard and trying not to cough. From where she was sitting, the heat of the fire was almost unbearable and made worse by the thick, oily smoke given off by the crates. What the _fuck_ were in those things?

It was difficult to make out over the roar of the flames, but she heard glass crunched again to her left. She moved right to compensate, and stopped. David was maybe five yards away, but with one look at his gleeful, bloodsplattered expression, Ellie felt the eerie paper-dry skin of his hand covering her own again.

There’s only so long a person can be afraid. Eventually, the body will shut it off in self-defense; fear drains resources. Between the acrid smoke searing her lungs and imminent death staring her in the face, Ellie overloaded the circuits.

He ran towards her, machete low but ready to arc in a deadly swing, and she was calm. She calmly snatched a glass bottle from one of the booths and calmly hurled it at David’s face. Luckily for her, it shattered, grinding all of David’s forward momentum to a stop while he tried to determine if there was glass in his eye.

One, two, three strides, and Ellie buried her switchblade opposite of the first wound she gave him, slipping under his arm as he reached blindly for her with a pain-filled bellow. She grappled him from behind, mulishly holding on. David backed up and slammed her into the wooden side of the booth. Her head cracked against the unyielding wood and the world slipped out of focus for a second, becoming a mix of browns, red, and orange.

He took advantage of her loosened grip and reached behind him, snagging the collar of her jacket. David heaved upwards and flipped Ellie over his shoulder, sending her crashing to the hard, wooden floor.

She thought she heard him hit the ground, too. She supposed he did, since she wasn’t dead yet. “Yet” being the operative term. Ellie didn’t think she could move to fend off an attack if it did come, much less get off the floor. She had the odd impression her skull was like a cracked egg, and it was very, very important that she doesn’t move, or else all the yolk would go running out.

Where was she going with this analogy? It was getting dark. Huh. She could have sworn it was bright as day in here a few seconds ago. If only she could remember where “here” was...It must not have been important if she forgot it.

But wait. Ellie opened her eyes. Oh, so that’s why it was dark. No, dammit, that’s not what she was thinking of. It was important. Very, very important. Maybe more important than the eggshell and the yolk. But what? What was it? She was so close. Why couldn’t she name it?

Ellie opened her eyes again. Strange how she never remembered closing them. Her throat burned and she wished she was back in the snow. Though maybe it wasn’t so bad in here. The embers looked like fireflies. Real ones, not ones with armbands and guns and tin dogtags. And she _must_ be tired, if she didn’t even remember closing her eyes. Maybe...she’d just...sleep for a...little...while…

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boosh! Final chapter. Remember that feedback is always appreciated. Enjoy.

Joel slowed to a stop, panting. Visibility had gotten worse in the hour and a half it took for him to reach the town, but that damn bell was clear as day. Why would they be ringing a bell in a  _snowstorm?_

He trudged toward the vague shape of a gas station to his right. Maybe...Maybe Ellie got away. Maybe she got away, and the bell would only stop ringing when they found her. He paused inside the door, his chest constricting painfully. If.  _If_ they found her.

"This is pointless! I can't see a thing!"

"Just keep searching. If she comes through here, we gotta catch her."

 _Clever girl._ Joel couldn't help but smile slightly as he moved behind the counter, next to a doorway leading to a drive-through garage. Of course she'd never sit around and wait to be rescued.

"We should be guarding the shelter. We've got an infected running around and we're guarding the damn exit."

 _What?_ His half-smile vanished and an uneasy feeling settled in his stomach. They knew she was infected?  _How?_  Joel couldn't think of a situation where Ellie would willingly show her scar. He didn't like what that implied.

He readied his shotgun and waited as the voices drew nearer.

"Look, the kid is deadly and we don't know where she's going to turn up next. Just keep your eyes and ears open."

A scuff of boots on concrete to his right. Joel leaned out into the garage and fired a round of buckshot into the hunter's chest. He went down with a gurgle, and one of his buddies rushed Joel with a plank. Joel shot him, too, then moved behind the old car as a hunter with a pistol took a few shots at him from the mouth of the garage. The hunter waited a few seconds, then crossed to the fridge next to the doorway into the station. Joel took note of the hunter's  buddy trying to flank him, then lunged forward, clearing the space between them in half a second. He smashed the butt of his shotgun into the hunter's nose, driving the cartilage into his brain like a spear. Joel turned and scalped the man trying to flank him with a shot from the hip.

The slap of rubber soles behind him, but he could only lift an arm over his head in defense. The pipe came down like a sledgehammer, sending hot pain spiraling up Joel's arm, but the hunter didn't follow through. Joel twisted his arm around the pipe and pulled it from the young man's hands, then swung it hard into the side of his knee. He crumpled, and Joel cut off his yell with a hit hard enough his skull opened up.

Joel grunted and shook off the pain, reloading his shotgun. He listened. There weren't any more he could hear, but then that storm complicated things. He slowly made his way to the front back of the open-ended garage, where the hunters had come in, and stopped. There, on top of the barricade, a twitchy man with a rifle fruitlessly combed the area. Joel traded out his shotgun for his rifle and peered through the scope.

_Goddamn idiot._

Joel shook his head and sighed, lining up his shot. The dumbass was standing directly in front of a trash fire, giving Joel a perfect silhouette to work with. He aimed for the center of the hunter's body, then pulled the trigger. He went down in a puff of red and someone beyond the barricade yelled.

Joel crouched and snuck out into the snow. A wild shot shattered the window of a car, which he hurried to put between himself and the shooter. He peered through the broken glass and spotted a vague shape at the top of a different part of the barricade. Joel stuck his rifle through the window and took aim. A twitch of his finger, and the shape crumpled.

The number of men they mustered to guard one access point--hell, the fact they even  _had_  an access point--was a big indicator that this wasn't just a ragged band of hunters. They were organized and dug in pretty damn well. Joel would be at a huge disadvantage once inside.

Not that it would stop him.

He switched back to his shotgun and advanced, climbing into the old train car they had repurposed as an entryway. Joel braced his gun against his shoulder and crept forward. If anyone was waiting for him, they'd be off to the side, just out of sight. He cleared his corners and continued into the town proper, angling right, away from the fire. He continued up the side of the block and stopped behind a car, peering into the storm. Three blotchy shapes milled around before him, walking aimlessly in circles.

He set his shotgun down next to him, against the car, and pulled out his rifle. He missed his first shot, the bullet whizzing by its target's head. The hunter ducked and blindly returned fire, wasting three shots before Joel pegged him in the chest. Or would have, if his rifle hadn't clicked empty.

_Shit._

The hunters scattered into cover while Joel fumbled with the slick bullets, his hands clumsy with the cold. One hunter settled down behind a car to Joel's right.

_Oh, fuckit._

He stood and ran, sliding over the hood of the car and freeing his axe from its velcro strap on his backpack. In the same movement, he slammed the blade into the hunter's chin. It crunched against bone, then slid past and into his neck, stopping against the vertebrae. Joel yanked his axe free and circled back to his guns. He finished loading the rifle and reattached the axe and shotgun to his bag, then rested the barrel of the rifle across the car's hood.

Joel caught a hint of movement and shot blindly. A yell told him he'd hit his mark. He stood and trotted down the middle of the street, mostly succeeding in ignoring the twisting pain in his abdomen as he scanned the storefronts to his right for an easy point of access. Going left would only take him back the way he came. A shot slammed into the brick wall in front of him, and he ran to the cover of an old police car.

_Son of a bitch._

He scanned the street the best he could in the blinding snow, gripping his rifle tighter so his hands wouldn't shake.  _Fool. Goddamn hare-brained fool,_  he berated himself.  _Three targets._  Three. 

He clenched his jaw and impulsively broke into a run down the street, a second shot whistling past his head. A dark shape came into view and he slammed into it, sending the smaller man sprawling. Joel dropped the rifle and slashed down and across with the axe in the same movement he used to free it. The hunter was suddenly opened up from his shoulder to his hip. Another slash, and his guts gleamed wetly in the weak light. Joel reattached the axe to his bag, picked up his rifle and resumed searching for a way out.

He spotted the orange glow of another fire and turned into the alley. He followed it to a dead end, but spotted a thick steel door hanging open.

_Trap._

Joel traded his rifle for his shotgun and cautiously inched into the room. Nothing. He pulled the door shut behind him and clicked on his light. The beam fell on a metal shelf, full of folded clothes, shoes, and…

Ellie's backpack.

"Why is Ellie's stuff here?" He didn't want to think about it. He  _really_ didn't want to think about it, but as he crossed the room and picked it up, his mind helpfully produced several horrifying scenarios. He almost dropped the bag when his fingers closed around dry blood, and a lot of it. Feeling sick, Joel inspected the bloodstain. It only covered the upper left of the bag and the strap, meaning if she was wearing the bag while she got injured, it would've been her shoulder that got hurt.

_She's smart, she's resourceful, she's sneaky. She's already escaped; maybe I'll meet up with her soon._

_She's also injured. Badly. And she wouldn't go anywhere without what's in this bag._ Joel sucked in a harsh breath and stuffed her smaller pack into his. He'd find her, dammit. He'd find her and no one would lay a hand on her again.

He scanned the room and spotted a scrap of paper on the shelf next to the clothes.

"Meat ledger…?" He read the list, dread settling in his stomach. "Fifty one hundred pounds...thirty four hundred pounds...There can't be enough meat out there for numbers like this…"

Joel dropped the ledger and pushed through the plastic strips into the next room.

"Oh Christ." He took a step back and covered his nose with his hand, half-expecting the bodies hanging from hooks to be rancid. They weren't, strangely. They weren't fresh, but they weren't rotting. They were being  _preserved._

Suddenly the ledger made sense and now full-blown panic that had been building ever since he woke up alone spurred Joel onwards. "I gotta find her. I gotta find her."

He ran through the front of what used to be a store and burst out onto the street, only for heat to slap him in the face.

"Holy shit…" he muttered, watching in a mixture of horror and gut-twisting worry as a steakhouse burned. "Ellie…"

* * *

Consciousness came slowly. Her head hurt, her shoulder hurt, her hip hurt, and the smoke and heat made her throat raw and dry. Ellie didn't want to move, but she saw David getting up out of the corner of her eye.  _Without his machete._

He must have dropped it. Ellie looked around, and spotted it underneath a booth near the banner. She rolled onto her knees and stopped, the motion sending waves of nausea and pain through her. She waited for her head to stop spinning, then inched forward as fast as she dared.

_Don't throw up, don't throw up, don't throw up._

She gasped for air, the smoke rasping in her lungs. Tears streamed down her cheeks, though she wasn't sure if it was because of the heat or the pain. She didn't care anymore, the world narrowed down to her and the machete.

_Almost there…_

A steel toed boot slammed into her ribs. Ellie grunted and her arms slid out from under her. She pushed her forehead against the carpet and bit back a sob, trying to get herself under control and  _don't throw up don't throw up don't throw up._

David chuckled, but it was weary. "I knew you had heart."

Ellie struggled to push herself back up to her knees, but her right leg stubbornly insisted on not cooperating, the worn sole of her shoe slipping on the carpet.

"You know, it's okay to give up. Ain't no shame in it."  Ellie managed to get to her elbows, panting, the world fading in and out of gray. There wasn't enough air. Why wasn't there enough air? She laboriously pulled herself forward, hip dragging against the ground and shoulder feeling like someone had stuck a hot poker in it and twisted.

_Don't throw up, don't throw up, don't throw up._

"I guess not. Just not your style, is it?" David kicked her again. It wasn't quite as hard as the first, but her already bruised ribs audibly cracked under the blow and rolled her onto her side. Ellie didn't stop the sob this time, and rolled back over onto her stomach. Just a little further. A few more inches and she could grab it.

David's knees hit the floor on either side of her and he grabbed her ponytail, yanking her head back. The rubber band came out of her hair, but he kept his hold. "You can try beggin'."

Rage came, flooding out most of the pain. Ellie bared her teeth and glared up at him the best she could. "Fuck you."

He rolled her over onto her back and wrapped his hands around her throat, cutting off her meager supply of air. She choked and dug her fingernails into his hands, but he only tightened his grip.

"You think you know me? Huh?" David growled, leaning in close to her face, his features twisted into a mask of hate. "Well let me tell you somethin': you have no idea what I'm capable of."

_Air. Need air._

She gave up trying to pry his fingers away and Ellie blindly threw her hand above her head, grasping for the hilt of the machete. He pressed down harder on her throat and her vision started to darken, but her hand met the wood leg of the booth. She stretched, her fingers grazing the textured grip. It slid just barely out of her reach.

_No, no, nonononono._

She stretched again, bracing her left shoulder against the ground to lift her right. Her fingers closed around the hilt.

Her attack was less of a swing and more of lifting the blade high enough it fell of its own accord. Luckily for her, David liked to keep his machete sharp enough that the weight of it alone was more than enough to break skin. He let go of her neck to block the blade, only to have it bite into his arm just above his wrist. He screamed and rolled off of her, clutching the wound. Ellie followed and straddled him before he could get up, sinking the machete into his head. She pulled it out and swung again, and again, and again, a feral mixture of rage and fear and the need to be certain he was dead keeping her going. Coherent thought was long gone, replaced by the thrum of her blood rushing through her ears and the tug of resistance when she cut into bone.

_Ellie! Stop! Stop!_

A pair of strong arms wrapped around her, pulling her away from her kill. Her ribs seared and she screamed wordlessly, turning and twisting, trying to get away. She might have yelled something else; she felt her mouth form the words, but she couldn't hear.

The strong hands turned her around and Ellie pushed against her assailant's chest. She was  _not_ going to die today, dammit.

"--okay--"

_That voice…_

Ellie slowly stopped struggling, her vision still too clouded with tears and smoke to make out who was holding her. The hands hurt, but the voice…

She blinked, hot tears spilling down her cheeks, and her mind slowly started to work again.  _Joel?_

He cupped her cheeks and the worried lines of his face came into focus. "Look. Look. It's me."

_Oh god._

Ellie crumpled into his chest, relief taking all the strength out of her limbs. She didn't have to be fight anymore. She didn't have to deal with it anymore. But with a flutter of panic, she realized she had to make him see that she didn't mean to leave him alone for as long as she did. Ellie hadn't meant to be gone longer than a couple of hours. Joel  _had_ to see that. He had to. She didn't mean to fail; to lose her head so spectacularly. She didn't want him to think less of her. "He tried to--"

Her throat closed up and then Joel's arms wrapped around her, tugging her close. It hurt, but in that moment she felt completely and undeniably  _safe,_  the worry falling away. She cried, partly out of pain, mostly in sheer relief. They were okay. They were alive. They would get out of this. 

"Oh, baby girl. It's okay. It's okay."

"Joel…"

Ellie felt him shaking, too, and then he pulled back, features still stricken with worry. He cupped her face again and started talking; started taking command like he always did.

"Ellie, we've got to run, okay? We've got to go while the storm lasts, or we won't make it out of here. Okay?"

It was all she could do to nod and let him help her to her feet. He walked her out, curbing his stride to keep pace with her stumbling missteps, a warm, protective arm curled across her back.

Then the snow was lashing her face and they were running, her fingers tangled with his so they wouldn't lose each other in the storm.

* * *

"Holy shit…" he muttered, watching in a mixture of horror and gut-twisting worry as a steakhouse burned. "Ellie…"

Joel broke into a run and didn't stop to try to open the door. He placed a solid kick next to the doorknob and it slammed open. He was fairly certain he'd popped a stitch in the process, but he didn't have time to worry about that now. A little glint of metal caught his attention and he dropped to his knees to fish it out from under a table. Ellie's switchblade, coated with blood.

A yell--a man, not Ellie--made his head snap up. It cut off mid-note and Joel saw a glittering arc of red fly off a blade on the backswing.

He pocketed her knife and thundered down the aisle of booths, then froze.

_Christ._

She'd already killed him quite thoroughly, but still Ellie kept on.

"Ellie! Stop! Stop!" Joel dragged her away from the body when she was pulling back for another swing and the machete clattered to the ground.

The way she screamed, he almost let her go. Instead he held on a little tighter while she twisted and turned, her eyes open but obviously not seeing anything.

"Don't touch me!  _Don't fucking touch me!"_

"Shh, shh," he soothed. His chest tightened at the raw note in her voice and he tried to handle her a little bit more gently, crouching.  "It's me. It's me."

Joel turned her around so she wouldn't slip out of his hands and she started pushing against his chest, shaking her head, her feet scrabbling uselessly against the carpet. He tried to clear the lump in his throat and did his best to sound comforting. It was hard, in the face of her pain. He wanted more than anything a switch he could flip that would make everything alright. "It's okay. It's me. It's me."

Ellie calmed down slightly, but she was hyperventilating and crying and  _oh Jesus that's a lot of blood._

He reached out and cupped her face.

"Look," he pleaded, his voice cracking. "Look. It's me. It's me."

He saw her bright green eyes clear, first shock, then tired relief crossing through them. She collapsed and leaned bonelessly against his shoulder, sobbing, and he felt the raw emptiness he hadn't known was there fade away. "He tried to--"

_Oh Christ._

"Oh, baby girl," he choked out. Joel hugged her to him and buried his face in her hair, torn between anger and helplessness. The words fell from his mouth without him meaning to, but he found he didn't want to take them back. "It's okay. It's okay."

"Joel…" That did it. That little, pained whisper. He was never going to let her out of his sight ever again. Not for anything. Not for anyone.

The beams above their head popped and cracked with the fire. They had to move. Joel pulled back and cupped her little face again.  _Jesus._ They really did a number on her...He cleared his throat and forced himself to sound confident. "Ellie, we've got to run, okay? We've got to go while the storm lasts, or we won't make it out of here. Okay?"

She blinked, then gave a nod more like a droop of her head. He pulled her to her feet and guided her out of the steakhouse, having to walk slower than he'd like in order for her to keep up with her hesitant, stumbling gait. She squinted against the snow, raising her right arm automatically to shield her face, and laced her fingers through his.

Joel led Ellie back to the shop-turned-meat freezer and ushered her through without giving her time to stop and notice the bodies. He shouldered open the steel door, then turned back to check on Ellie. She was pale as paper beneath the blood splattering her face like freckles, her eyes unfocused. She swayed unsteadily on her feet.

"I think…" she started slowly, her voice hollow and disconnected. "I think I'm gonna--"

Ellie doubled over and vomited, then stumbled away from her puddle with a quiet whimper. She leaned against the wall, shaking, and Joel crossed over to her.

"Ellie?" he asked uncertainly, his hands hovering over her. She reached out and grabbed onto his jacket.

"Think I 'ave a concussion," she slurred, seeming to struggle to keep her eyes focused. "He hit me pretty hard…"

"I'm going to pick you up and carry you, okay?" Ellie blinked wearily, then dipped her head in consent. Joel wasted no time in scooping her into his arms. She was far lighter than any growing fourteen year old had a right to be.

"You've got to stay awake, Ellie. You hear me?" he said, his voice rough. He tromped through the snow, past the bodies of the hunters he'd killed earlier, and into the repurposed train car.

"I hear ya, Joel," she muttered faintly, closing her eyes.

"Shit," he hissed, and broke into a run.

* * *

Joel wasn't comfortable with stopping. Unfortunately, he couldn't handle carrying Ellie and their equipment beyond the neighborhood he woke up in. Instead he settled for the house furthest from the resort and holed up in the basement. Someone had evidently had the same idea a while back, since there were piles of blankets scattered around, motheaten, but serviceable. Joel also discovered a small hand-cranked generator in the corner that powered a space heater. A few minutes of cranking, and the small basement became blessedly warm.

Joel settled down beside Ellie, who he had laid out on one of the piles of blankets, and opened a first aid kit. She shifted and her eyes cracked open, trailing aimlessly around the room until they locked onto him.

"Joel?" Her voice was raspy and small. Fragile, even. He wanted to go back to the town and hurt those people. He wanted to bring them the kind of pain they inflicted on Ellie. By the way she got a little paler, he supposed that showed in his face.

Joel carefully blanked his features, then tried for something reassuring. He set out a pair of tweezers and a couple of chitosan bandages. "Yeah?"

"I'm fucked up pretty bad, aren't I?" she asked, her voice not just cracking, but shattering. Joel clenched his teeth.

"Fucked up" was putting it lightly. Where she wasn't bruised or bloody, she was deathly pale, and there wasn't an inch of her clothing that wasn't charred or bloody or caked in unidentifiable grim. Her hair was matted with blood and loose from her ponytail, hanging in dirty strands over her hollow, bruised cheeks. A dark splotch of purple spanned from the far corner of her eye to the bridge of her misshapen nose, cutting across lighter shades of yellow and blue. Bruises the shape of fingers cut across her throat, and her breath was short and shallow, making a faint grating sound similar to snoring.

On top of it all, she looked like she hadn't eaten or slept for days. With a sinking feeling, he realized that probably wasn't too far from the truth.

Joel decided it was better to be honest, but the words still felt like broken glass and gravel in his mouth. "Yeah, looks like."

Ellie shuddered and squeezed her eyes shut, blindly reaching for his hand. He squeezed her cold, bony fingers comfortingly. "But that don't mean it ain't fixable."

She shuddered again, her face twisted as if she were crying, but there were no tears.

"You've gotta believe me, Ellie. It's okay. We can fix this. But I'm going to need your help, alright?" Joel folded both of his hands around hers and she opened her eyes, though the pained expression remained.

"W-what do you need me to do?"  _Bless her, brave child._

"Right now I need you to help me get you out of your jackets. Can you do that?"

She nodded and let go of his hand to mechanically unzip her hoodie. She pulled her right arm out of both sleeves, then tugged her left arm out, too, and the lines of pain in her face deepened for a moment. Joel slid his hand under her back and lifted her up enough to slide the discarded layers out from under her, leaving her in a bloodstained gray shirt. It was made of a thin material and was several sizes too big for her, hanging off her frame where it wasn't plastered to her skin by dried blood. A hole the size of nickel in her hip still oozed sluggishly, and Joel could see the tip of bloodsoaked cloth poking out of the wound. A crude way to the staunch bleeding, but it saved her life.

He sat back on his heels and knew he needed to go get water, but balked at the thought of leaving her alone.

_Leave her alone for a minute, or lose her forever._

Joel stood up and Ellie lifted her head, the pain on her face drowned out by panic. "Joel?"

He grabbed a two-gallon bucket from the corner and turned back to Ellie. "I'll only be gone for a minute. I'm just getting some snow to melt so we can get you cleaned up, okay?"

She let her head fall back to the blankets, too exhausted to hold it up any longer, and bit her already bloodied lip, ignoring the thin trickle of fresh blood leaking from her nose. "Hurry."

"I won't be long. I promise." Joel turned and took the stairs two at a time, stepping over the tripwire he'd left at the top and then the other on his way out the back door.

The storm had only gotten worse, now howling like a living thing. It tore at his clothes and hair, stinging his face and hands like nettles. Joel pressed his lips into a thin line and stubbornly trudged out a few paces, then crouched and started to shovel snow into his bucket, pausing between scoops to pack it down tightly.

He stood, his knees aching in protest, and headed back inside, the door slamming shut with the force of the wind behind him. It was so much quieter inside he had to take a moment to adjust before starting back down the stairs.

He got halfway down and froze, staring down the barrel of one of his pistols. Ellie gasped and dropped the gun like it had burned her, scooting away from it and drawing her knees up to her chest.

"I'm so sorry I didn't mean to I--"

"Ellie," Joel said quietly, cutting off her half-incoherent rambling. "It's okay. We're okay."

She blinked owlishly, still tense, and parroted mechanically, "We're okay." 

Joel nodded, and slowly settled down next to her with a quiet groan, placing the bucket in front of of the space heater. "That's right. We're okay."

She hunched her shoulders and kept her head down, avoiding Joel's eyes, clutching her scar. He gently pried her hand away and rubbed a thumb over her knuckles, not caring about the dried blood staining her hands.

"I don't  _feel_  okay."

Joel's chest tightened and he wished he could think of something to comfort her. He wished he could find the words that would make it all okay. He wished he could say something completely and undeniably right. Instead, he tried to swallow the lump in his throat and said, "Let me look at your head while the snow's meltin'."

It killed him to see her shoulders hunch tighter and her head dip lower as she realized he couldn't give her the comfort she deserved. Ellie reached behind her with her right hand and touched the back of her head. The area was matted with blood and, when he touched it, still slightly wet. He carded his fingers through her hair, pressing down lightly on her skull, checking for cracks. Finding none, he let his hands fall.

"D'you feel sick?" Joel asked, taking his flashlight from its strap on his bag.

"Not anymore."

"Neck hurt?" He flicked it on and shined it in her eyes one at a time to check her dilation. Ellie started to squint, then relaxed, realizing what he was doing. Her pupils grew and shrunk normally, the best he could tell. Joel turned off his light and set it aside.

 _"Everything_  hurts."

He would have thought she was being snarky in any other situation. Joel pulled a rag out of his bag and scooped a handful or partially melted snow out of the bucket. He folded the snow into the rag and put the cold compress to the back of Ellie's head. She winced, but reached back with her right hand to hold the compress in place.

"Dizzy? Confusion?"

"No."

Joel nodded. If she did have a concussion, and the vomiting wasn't just stress, there wasn't a whole hell of a lot he could do about it anyway. They had to keep going tomorrow, storm and injuries or not.

"You're bleeding."

Joel glanced down at his stomach. Sure enough, blood was oozing through his flannel shirt.

"You…" Ellie started, her voice harsh and low. The tired, glazed look in her eyes was gone, replaced with something fiery. "You  _fucking jackass."_

"It's nothin'," he protested gruffly. "You're bleedin' more'n I am. I popped a stitch s'all."

"You were also fevered--" Ellie had to pause to take another short breath, but that didn't diminish the ferocity of her tone in the slightest. "--and in a half-coma for three--" another breath. "--fucking weeks," she snapped, scowling at him. Joel started.

 _Three weeks? She's been alone for_ three  _weeks?_

She put the compress down and started to reach for the first aid kit. He caught her hand and she flinched away, tearing her hand from his. He looked at her, stunned, but all at once the fight left her, leaving her looking more tired than before. Ellie didn't meet his eyes.

_Is she hurt there, too? No, I was holdin' her hand earlier. Why didn't she pull away then? Did I...did I scare her?_

The thought of Ellie being afraid of him...His throat closed and he clenched his hands into fists to keep them from shaking. God knows  _he'd_ deserve it, but  _she_  sure as hell didn't.

"Joel--" She cut herself off and shook her head, sagging.

"We're takin' care of you first," he insisted, hoping his voice wasn't distressed. "I can wait. Lie down."

She grimaced, but complied, carefully lying down on the pile of blankets and putting her compress back in place. Her breathing got shallower than it was before, her face pinched with pain.

"Where?" Joel asked. Ellie pointed to her left side. He felt her ribs through her shirt and his finger snagged on a crack three times; once on the fourth rib, twice along the fifth. It worried him he could feel her ribs that easily.

"Can't do much of anything for them," he explained apologetically. "Wrappin' them's a bad idea. Might help with the pain, but it's just askin' for pneumonia."

"How the hell's...pneumonia...related to this?"

"I'll tell you later," Joel promised, turning to the bucket. The snow had melted, leaving a decent amount of lukewarm water. He lifted it away from the space heater and set it down beside him, pulling another rag from his backpack. Joel dipped it in the water, then let it drip over the places where Ellie's shirt was stuck to her wounds. The dried and frozen blood loosened enough for her to peel off her shirt. He lifted her enough for her to get it over her shoulders and immediately had to stamp down another wave of fury.

Mottled bruises covered her torso and every one of her ribs were visible, the crooked, cracked bones even more so. He was reminded vaguely of those old commercials that showed pictures of starving children in Africa, with their little emaciated bodies.

_Half-dead of malnutrition and still fought like hell…_

Joel dabbed at the area around the hole in her hip, clearing away the blood. A purple ring surrounded the site when he was finished, and he dropped the rag into the bucket and tore open the package of the chitosan bandage, getting it ready. He picked up the tweezers, then paused, hovering over the wound.

"There's morphine in that kit," he offered. "It's gonna hurt worse comin' out than it did goin' in."

Ellie looked to be considering it, then shook her head.

"You sure?"

A nod.

He sighed and delicately plucked the cloth plug from the hole, then glanced at her face to make sure she was ready. Ellie gave him a thin, grim smile. Joel carefully probed into the hole with his tweezers, trying not to touch flesh more than absolutely necessary.

The tip of the tweezer tapped something metal and Ellie jumped like she'd been shocked by a live wire, a choked, startled noise forced from her throat.

"I know it hurts, baby girl," Joel said quietly, widening the tweezers to the width of the bullet. Again he said  _those_  words without meaning to. Again they didn't feel like the wrong ones. "But you've gotta stay still. Keep still as you can, alright?"

He saw her nod out of the corner of his eye and he slid the tweezers around the bullet. She hissed and she tore at the mattress of blankets, but kept her body nearly perfectly still. Joel slowly extracted the bullet, knowing exactly what would happen if he tried to rip it out like tearing off a band-aid. The bleeding would worsen and she'd go into shock in half a minute, then die in ten.

Ellie didn't have this foreknowledge, as evidenced by the half-curses she flung at him through gritted teeth.

The bullet came out with a wet pop, then clattered to the concrete floor as Joel dropped it and the tweezers, reaching instead for the bandage. He pressed it down tightly against the wound, where it adhered quickly.

Ellie sunk into the blankets, shivering and sweating. Joel retrieved his rag and turned his attention to her left shoulder.

"Just one more, Ellie. Then you're gonna eat somethin' and go to sleep."

"I'm not...hungry," she protested with no real heat as he cleaned the furrow in her shoulder, having to pause for breath in the middle of the sentence. The furrow started bleeding again and Joel readied another bandage.

"You'll eat anyway," he said simply, finishing cleaning out the wound. He pressed the second bandage down on it, then rinsed out the rag and started to clean the blood from her face and hands.

"What if...I throw up...again?"

"Then you'll eat a little more and drink somethin'."

"Wh--"

"When was the last time you ate somethin'?" Joel interrupted, casting her a hard look as he shed his jacket. He laid the jacket over her, and she frowned in contemplation. Her shivering slowly stopped.

"Four, maybe five...hours ago."

Joel's brow furrowed. That would be around the same time he was out and about looking for her in the neighborhood. Ellie saw his confusion and looked away, her expression darkening. He remembered the meat locker and his stomach lurched.

"Ellie, did they--"

"I didn't eat...the meat they...gave me." Ellie looked back at Joel, her eyes haunted. "Can we not...talk about this?"

He sighed and placed the rag back in the bucket, which he shoved to the other side of the small room. Joel searched through his backpack and came up with no food, not even a crumb. He sighed again, this time in annoyance.

"There was food...in my backpack," Ellie said, staring up at the ceiling. "They took it. Lost my knife, too."

"You sure about that?" Joel set her backpack beside her, then pulled her switchblade out of his pocket and set it on top of the bag. Something that was almost happy flickered across her face, then she saw the blood still on the knife and looked away, her jaw clenched.

_Shit._

Joel moved the switchblade to the backpack's side pocket.

"Ellie?"

"Second pocket. Canned food."

He opened the indicated pocket and found it empty. He sighed. God dammit. He'd have to leave her alone again to get food.  _And,_ he thought, starting to feel a bit of the chill in the room despite the space heater.  _New clothes. For both of us._  "They must've searched through your stuff. It's gone."

"What?!" Ellie sat up too quickly, his jacket slipping off her, and doubled over, one hand on her hip, the other on her ribs. She gasped in pain, her eyes squeezed shut, then she reached over and snatched the bag. She opened up the main pocket and rifled through it for a moment, then relaxed. Ellie set the bag aside and set out a little brown bottle and a syringe.

"They didn't get  _everything,"_  she muttered. Joel frowned and picked up the bottle, then rubbed his eyes and looked again to make sure he was reading it right.

"How the  _hell_  did you get penicillin?"

Ellie wrapped herself up in Joel's jacket again and gave him a grimace that could very generously be called a smile. He frowned down at the bottle and opened his mouth to say something, but when he looked up, she'd already closed her eyes and was fast asleep.

He shook his head with a small smile, and drew out a dose of the medicine. He injected it, then swaddled the bottle in cloth and set it away from where it might get knocked over or broken. Then Joel pulled a suture kit from the first aid box and unbuttoned his shirt, setting to work on the hole in his side.

* * *

Ellie woke with gunfire and the shriek of infected in her ear. She was on her feet and wondering why the hell she was missing her pistol when she realized the noises had been part of her dream. Then the pain hit her like a sack of shit.

Ellie staggered into the wall and leaned against it, every part of her hurting in some way or another. Her head felt like someone had cracked it open and taken pieces out, her side felt like it was on fire, and her hip and shoulder hurt less than they did yesterday, but hurt all the same.

Her legs and arms were practically useless, trying to turn into boneless jelly each time she shifted her weight. Ellie slid to the floor instead of trying to keep standing and noticed something very important.

Joel was gone.

She was back on her feet in a flash and striding to the stairs when she tripped and just barely caught herself against the wall before she fell. The action jarred her ribs, making it harder to breathe for a second. Ellie groaned and turned to see what she tripped over. Joel's backpack.

Her half-panic ebbed slightly. He would have taken his bag with him if there had been trouble or if he was going very far. Or if he was leaving.

Ellie shoved the thought away. No, no. He wouldn't leave her. She pulled his jacket tighter around herself. No way. He came to get her in a fucking snowstorm; he wasn't going anywhere. He wasn't.

She still hadn't managed to convince herself by the time she heard footsteps upstairs.

Ellie automatically snatched up the nearest gun and covered the stairs, but set it--the shotgun--down as soon as Joel's snow-covered boots came into view.

He tried to smile when he saw her, clothes and a couple of cans in his arms, but it was betrayed by the dark worry in his eyes.

She hated it. She hated that he worried so much about  _her_ he'd go without patching up himself until she pretended to be asleep. She hated that she doubted he cared about her as her and not just as the cure.

_You're right. You're not my daughter, and I sure as hell ain't your dad. And we are goin' our separate ways._

"Ellie?" Joel set the clothes and cans down on the pile of smelly old blankets. "You alright?"

"Yeah."  _No._

He smiled again, and this time it was a little more genuine, touched by relief. "We need to get movin' today. Storm let up early this mornin'. Get dressed, get some food in you, then we're quittin' this place."

The thought of food made her queasy, but Ellie forced her legs to carry her across the room and she picked up a can at random.

Breakfast rushed by in a blur, full of long silences and half-answered questions that weren't really listened to in the first place. Her head buzzed with exhaustion, her own thoughts barely registering as words before they slipped away. One, in a chilling voice, abruptly surfaced and stuck. 

_You should eat._

Ellie set down her can of--beans? Ravioli? She didn't know, but it tasted like what she ate in the cage--only half-eaten.  _Don't think about it, don't think about it, don't think about it...fuck._

_He brought a cleaver down hard and shoved a human hand with a watch still on its wrist off the block to the floor, where it joined a pair of feet. She gasped and shoved herself back from the door. James paused mid-swing and turned to look at her, revealing Joel's craggy face twisted into a mask of pain unaltered by death._

She got up a little too quickly and almost pitched forward. Ellie saw Joel reach out and speak, his hands hovering near, but not touching. Ellie tried to smile reassuringly at him, then straightened and crossed the room to the clothes Joel brought back.

It was mostly things meant for her, she realized. And he'd brought a rather wide selection. Not all of them could have come from this house. A knot of guilt lodged in her chest when she noticed a majority of the articles were red. Of course Joel would remember an offhand comment she made about liking the color. Of course he'd go out of his way to get it.

She picked out a gray thermal and red swea _\--red like blood on snow, gunshots and shrieks and pain--_ ter. Ellie put the sweater back and went with the brown one that looked a bit more comfortable and would actually fit under the maroon hoodie that was also on the pile. She also picked out a sturdier pair of jeans than the ones she had on, then started up the stairs to change, having to pause several times on the way up to catch her breath.

It was perturbing how quiet it was. No birds, no wind, no rats squeaking, no Callus. Just the sound of the house groaning under the weight of the snow. The hairs on the back of Ellie's neck stood on end and she crept to the bathroom on her right as quickly as she dared, her thoughts becoming a little disjointed. She got the door closed behind her and clicked the lock into place, her only light filtering in through a dusty window above the bathtub.

She changed as quickly as she could, even finding a new hair tie on the vanity, but had to sit down and give her legs a rest twice. Ellie stumbled back out into the hall and down the stairs, not pausing this time. She was panting like she'd ran a marathon when she reached the base of the stairs, sweating and cold and hurting with Joel's jacket slung over her shoulder.

"Ellie?" Joel asked. He had changed too, trading out his flannel for more flannel and a different jacket. She let the one she was carrying fall to the floor, putting a hand against her ribs. He had also packed up, and was carrying both their bags.

"I'm fine," she said, taking her backpack from him. She settled it onto her shoulders, but it felt oddly light without the stash of arrows and supplies she normally kept. It pressed down roughly on her bandage, but she could deal with that. She had to deal with that. Joel was still hurt; he shouldn't even be carrying  _his_ pack.

"Ellie."

"Hm?"

"I was talkin' to you."

_What? He was?_

"Oh. Sorry. What were you saying?"

Joel frowned, his face creasing in concern.

"We can take another day if you're not ready," he offered. Ellie's legs shook and she was so very tempted to stay, but…

_Alright. I need you to round up everyone who isn't armed and get 'em to clear outta here. We're gonna find that girl, and we're gonna kill her._

_Oh my God. I'll take the kids to the shelter._

No, they couldn't waste any time. A lot of little kids would grow up without dads, or uncles, or brothers because of her, but she was going to save  _them,_  even if it killed her. The Fireflies were waiting, and she and Joel had to hurry or they'd miss them again. 

Ellie shook her head. "I'm fine. We should go."

Joel didn't look convinced in the least, but led her back up the stairs and out the door, into the snow glare and bitter air.


End file.
